Jonah Hex: Shades of Gray
by Susan Hillwig
Summary: The Blackest Night is over, and the Brightest Day has begun...but unbeknownst to all, Jonah Hex has been ressurrected after being dead for over a century.  Why was he brought back, and what consequences will it bring to the modern day DCU?  Ongoing story!
1. The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

_You ever get an idea that just won't leave your head? One that you know you should just dump due to its impossibility, but that dang "what if" factor makes it too intriguing to totally turn away from? I got one of those five years ago as I finished "The Long Road Home" and jumped into doing Western fics for DC2. Somewhere in-between, this idea had begun to form, this stupid, no-way-in-Hell-you-can-pull-it-off notion whose story potential would give me a guilty-pleasure kind of smile, even though I knew it couldn't be done._

_I wanted to put Jonah Hex in the future again. More precisely, I wanted to put him in the present, Modern DCU. No dorky Road Reaper outfits or mutant freaks or all the other layers of junk that Fleisher thought "the future" should consist of. Just the everyday craziness that is the DCU of the early 21st Century, and good ol' Jonah trying to cope with it. Plus I wanted the added wrinkle of avoiding time travel: somehow, someway, our Jonah Hex would be the one that had lived to the ripe old age of 66 and been killed in 1904...but had been resurrected in present times. Perhaps he'd escaped Purgatory like Hal Jordan did when he became the Spectre, or some mystical villain had put together an army of ghosts and Jonah had wrestled free of their control. The "how" wasn't so important to me as the result: a young, unscarred Hex with all the skill and experience he'd accumulated over nearly seven decades, one that never had to go back to the past, and who could perhaps learn from all his mistakes and finally have a decent life in the here-and-now. There would be adventures, of course, and friends both new and old to fight alongside him, and probably even consequences to whatever method brought him back to life. For the next five years, I turned this odd little gem over and over in my head, looking at it from every angle and delighting in its facets...but I could never nail down a satisfactory "how". Without a way to bring Jonah Hex back that made sense (to me, at least), I couldn't proceed._

_Then Geoff Johns dropped "Blackest Night/Brightest Day" in my lap. He did all the "how" work for me, and I give him a thousand thank-yous for it. After a brief pondering of the "why" in particular to Jonah himself (and I've got a pretty good one that I think Geoff and Co. may have missed), I got to work on the first issue of Jonah Hex: Shades of Gray. I say "issue" because this WILL be an ongoing story, with no set end in sight...I'll call it quits when the ideas finally run out. With luck, you'll find a new chapter every couple of months. And even though I'm setting this within regular DCU continuity like "The Long Road Home" was, I consider this an Elseworlds because I know there'll be times where my ideas might possibly disrupt how things would normally play out in the regular DC Universe...just like dropping a pebble in a pond causes ripples to travel everywhere across it, Jonah Hex living amongst us 21st Century yahoos is gonna have an effect, both good and bad. But I promise you, it'll never be boring._

_**Disclaimer:**__ All characters in this story are owned by DC Comics__. Despite my dogged persistence in writing Jonah Hex fics ad nauseum, I make absolutely no claims towards owning that character or any others I may include in this story. This is just me spinning a little pipe-dream to amuse myself and any other Hex-nut that might stumble across it._

_**Continuity:**__ This story is set a few years after my fic "The Long Road Home," though it isn't necessary to read one to understand the other. It begins at roughly the same time as Brightest Day #0, and will do its level best to approximate the timeline of Modern DCU from there on out. Dates may get staggered slightly due to the fluidity of comic book time from one title to the next...I've been straining my brain trying to figure out how to line up events of a weekly book next to a monthly when there's no obvious crossover points, so I'm gonna be guesstimating a lot of the time. Originally posted on the DC2 fanfiction site as part of its Elseworlds section, and is not considered part of normal DC2 continuity, despite possible similarities between this and my other DC2 work. For a link, please click on the homepage listed under my profile._

**THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE**

_Blood and ashes  
Time burning  
On the skyline_

_Dark against the stars  
A solitary horseman  
Waiting  
Lashed to the wheel  
Ripping in the storm  
Get up, Jonah  
It's your time to be born  
Get up Jonah  
It's your time to be born._

_- Bruce Cockburn_

Dusk was beginning to fall as Maggie Dupree guided the eighteen-wheeler down the highway with idle grace, her left hand resting upon the steering wheel while her right slipped a new CD into the player. Seconds later, the husky tones of Elvis Presley wafted through the cab, telling of how he wanted to be her teddy bear. Maggie smiled. "They're playing our song, Jeff," she said, glancing at the photo taped to the dashboard. It showed a much-younger Maggie hugging a man of equal youth as they sat at a picnic table, fifteen long years ago. Some days it seemed like only yesterday, but after what happened last night, she was keenly aware of just how long it had been since she'd kissed Jeff goodbye. When she looked in the mirror these days, a middle-aged gal of forty-three looked back, while Jeff remained just the same in her mind's eye. That had been the scariest part about last night: the thought that he'd show up, and the illusion she clung to would be shattered in an instant. But he didn't show, thank the Lord, and her memory of him remained untarnished when the sun finally rose again. Still, the thought lingered in the back of her mind, and she did her best to ignore it as she headed for the Arizona border.

The highways had been rather vacant all day, and Maggie took advantage of it by pushing her rig as fast as it would go - California was a big state, and she had a lot of lost miles to make up for - so it was a bit of a surprise when she spotted the man walking alongside the road. He didn't have a thumb out to indicate he needed a ride, but his stiff shoulders and long-legged stride bespoke a man too proud to ask for one. Something about that appealed to Maggie, so she pulled her rig over to the side of the road just ahead of the man. As she waited for him to approach, she reached under her seat and checked the spring-loaded holster strapped there, containing Jeff's old .38 automatic. In all her years on the road, she'd never had a bit of trouble from a hitchhiker, but that didn't make her lax about keeping some insurance around.

After a few minutes, the man still hadn't come up to the door, so Maggie checked the rearview mirrors to figure out where he was. Then she saw him walk right past the front of the cab, still heading down the road like she wasn't there. Rolling down the window, she stuck her head out and yelled, "Hey! Don't you want a lift?"

The man stopped and looked back at her. He wasn't dressed like a typical hitchhiker: his collarless shirt was clean and white, and his blue jeans didn't show any signs of fading. The only thing on him that seemed worn was his cuffed leather boots, which had a good layer of dirt and dust upon them. A gray, wide-brimmed cowboy hat hid most of his face as he answered in a thick Southern accent, "Ah ain't got any money."

"What does this look like, a Greyhound bus? Get over here!" Maggie reached over and popped the passenger-side door, and the man finally got the message, loping back to the rig as Elvis started to sing about that old Kentucky rain. Once he reached the door, he took off his hat, revealing an unlined face and a tousle of red hair - he looked to be in his late twenties, though his pale-blue eyes seemed far too old for such a young face. Holding the hat to his chest, he nodded and said "Ma'am" as a way of greeting.

"Where you headed?" she asked.

"Ain't rightly sure. Away from here is a good start."

It sounded like a joke, but the tone of his voice suggested dead-seriousness, and it got Maggie worried. "You're not running from the cops, are you?"

"No, ma'am," he answered, shaking his head. "Ah just...Ah had a bad night out here, an' Ah'd like tuh leave it behind me."

"Oh." Maggie's thoughts turned to her own bad night, and her heart immediately went out to the stranger. "Well, come up, then. I'm Maggie, by the way."

"Jonah," he replied, pulling himself up into the cab. Tucked under one arm was a lumpy gray bundle, which he held onto tightly as he leaned over to shut the door. She thought it might be a bedroll of some sort, since it appeared to be made of wool like an old army blanket, but it wasn't large enough.

Once he was in, Maggie threw the big rig into gear, then glanced over at him and said, "Seatbelt."

"Beg pardon?"

"Your seatbelt...you forgot to put it on. Safety first, you know."

Jonah stared at her for a good five seconds, his brow furrowing slightly, then his eyes flicked away and he turned in his seat, fumbling behind him until he grabbed hold of the shoulder strap and drew it across himself. It took a few more seconds of fumbling before he got the buckle snapped into place, and after he did, he looked once more at Maggie, who said, "Okay, then," and eased the eighteen-wheeler back onto the road. As she did so, "Return to Sender" began to pour out of speakers. "You like Elvis?" she asked.

"Never met the man," Jonah answered in that sounds-like-a-joke-but-dead-serious tone.

His attitude snuffed any other attempts at conversation from Maggie, and miles rolled past with no sound in the cab save for the King's constant serenade. From time to time, Maggie would glance over at her passenger from the corner of her eye. His own eyes appeared to be examining everything inside the cab, all the while holding that bundle close to his chest. When she saw his gaze linger on the picture taped to the dash, she told him, "That's Jeff."

"He's yer sweetheart?"

His choice of words made her smile, despite herself. "He's my husband..._was_, I should say. He's gone now. It's been...eleven years, this fall."

"Ah'm sorry."

There was different tone in Jonah's voice now, one that made the words seem genuine instead of the hollow, knee-jerk reply most people give when speaking of the death of strangers. Maggie looked over at him briefly, then turned her attention back to the road, saying, "Thank you." After a few seconds, she added, "He was a good man. Ambitious. Doing the whole trucking thing was his idea. The two of us went everywhere together... this was our little rolling apartment." She waved a hand towards the area directly behind their seats, where a heavy curtain was hung.

Jonah reached back and pushed the curtain aside. "Damnation, thet's the fanciest berth Ah've ever seen," he said with a note of awe.

Maggie laughed. The "berth", as Jonah called it, consisted of a twin-size bunk with storage compartments beneath, a mini-fridge and microwave, and a tiny fold-down table. Bolted to the wall in one corner was a TV with a VCR/DVD hookup. "That's nothing. I've known truckers that could charge rent for the swank setups they have." She waved her hand again, saying, "This was enough for me and Jeff, though. We'd haul this rig all over the country, stop in rest stations to clean up, eat fast-food burgers like they were going out of style...our families thought we were crazy, but we loved it."

"Sounds like yuh had a good life together," Jonah said, letting the curtain fall back.

"Until the cancer came, yeah. After that hit, we had a lot of stationary time. But Jeff made me promise to keep going after he was gone, so...here I am." She sniffled, then said to Jonah, "What about you?"

"Whut _about _me?"

"Come on! You're telling me that you're gonna let me spill my guts like that and then offer up nothing about yourself?"

He leaned back in his seat. "Seems thet way."

"You've gotta give me _something_. What's a Southern boy like you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?" She gestured to the spurs attached to his dusty boots. "Your horse drop dead in the desert while you were playing cowboy, maybe?"

Jonah didn't reply, he just stared at the passing landscape, what little there was of it. "Fine, don't say anything," Maggie muttered. "Just sit there like a lump and enjoy the free ride." She tried to focus on the road ahead, but occasionally, her eyes would wander over to her silent passenger as he looked out the window. At least, from her perspective, he appeared to be looking out the window.

But if she could have seen things from Jonah's angle, she would have realized his too-old eyes were looking directly at the reflection of his young, unlined face in the rearview mirror.

* * *

_He cannot move, and he does not know why. The last thing he remembers is playing cards in the saloon, waiting for Wheeler to get back from his ride in that infernal automobile. He hates the things. They remind him of something he's tried his whole life to forget. But Wheeler is young, so he lets the boy have his fun, and when he gets back..._

_Wait. Wheeler did come back, after...after what? Something happened. He tries to remember, but it's like a fog hanging in front of his eyes. His eyes...they're open, but he can't see. Dammit, what happened? He calls Wheeler's name, but no sound comes out of his mouth._

_A sudden light in his eyes...something has been pulled off his face. He still can't see, the whole world is a bright blur. Voices around him, familiar voices. Not Wheeler, not Tall Bird...who? He tries to focus with all his might, and slowly, a picture forms. He is looking down upon two men, one of whom is holding a tarp. Lew Farnham. Owns a Wild West show. Tried to get him to join it, prance around in some godawful spangled costume like a clown, but he refused. Never. Not that future. He walked away from Farnham in order to prevent it. But what is Farnham doing here now, grinning up at him like that? Then he hears Farnham speak...muffled, but he can make out most of the words. About how much money they're going to rake in displaying the body. The body? What body? Whose..._

_Then it all comes back to him in a flood: the shotgun blasts that rip into his chest and belly, the weakness that pins his body to the ground as his blood pools beneath him, the last breath that escapes his collapsing lungs right before the darkness pulls him under. And he knows, he knows he's dead, he's DEAD, he's just a corpse, stuffed and mounted because Lew Farnham doesn't take no for an answer, and he wants to scream but he can't even open his mouth because the taxidermist wired his jaw shut._

_He sees Farnham's assistant walk up with one of his Dragoons, and the sight of that turns his despair into rage, pure rage, and the man wedges the gun into his outstretched hand, and the next thing he knows, he can MOVE. It's only his hand, but he pulls the trigger and the Dragoon makes a thunderous crash and the assistant's head is blown in half. Inside his corpse, his soul grins, and he's about to take aim at the gaping Farnham, but suddenly the darkness pulls him under again. He fights against it as hard as he can, hoping for at least a few seconds so he can get his revenge on Farnham, but it's no use, and the world goes black._

_He hopes this is the end, that release will follow, but when the darkness parts again, he sees crowds of people staring at him. Some are laughing, others look bored. He spits obscenities at all of them and tries to move like he'd done before, but nothing happens. He's frozen in place, only able to stare back as hundreds of faces file past, day after day, year after year, mocking him in his ghoulish prison. After a while, he begins to wonder if he'd ever really fired the gun, or if perhaps it was just something his tortured mind invented._

_Sometimes the darkness returns, and he goes gladly now, if only so he can find respite from the endless parade of humanity. He doesn't know how much time passes during these periods of insensibility, but he knows that some of the spans are rather long going by the idle bits of chatter he can make out after waking. Then one day, as his soul resurfaces from the deep, he sees that the tent he'd been on display in is gone, replaced by four solid walls and an array of random junk. He never sees Farnham again, nor anyone else from the Wild West show. Perhaps his presence no longer drew any money, so they sold him...a thought that adds even more insult to the indignities that have been visited upon him. He spends a good length of time cursing Farnham anew, along with the unknown idiot that dumped him in this dank place. He never sees anyone, never hears anything, and it soon becomes an entirely different sort of Hell, with nothing for his mind to feed upon but his own memories, which begin to twist into monstrous shapes as the isolation drags on and on. He prays for the darkness to return, and sometimes it does, but more often than not, he is awake and aware and in anguish._

_Changes eventually come, but not great changes: he is moved to another location, he is put on display somewhere then shoved back into storage, he is repaired by people that do not seem to know the difference between dead flesh and dry plaster. At one point, he is put on a pedestal at some sort of outdoor carnival, where the elements can have their way with him. It is during this period that a pair of figures approach him, looking up with him in a way no one else has since this nightmare started. The man talks like Wheeler, but is not. And the woman...so old, wheelchair-bound, but her face..._

_Tall Bird. Lord, how long has it been since he gazed upon her? His love for her reignites within him like a blaze, hotter than the love he felt for any other woman when he'd been alive. She has found him, after countless years, and he knows that she will finally end his suffering, and out of nowhere, he realizes he can MOVE. But before he is able to do anything, other men appear, threatening Tall Bird and her companion. They want him, and they will kill to possess him, so he does what he did so long ago and fires his Dragoon. The lead man falls dead, and the others are subdued by Tall Bird's companion, who speaks directly to him as the darkness closes in. The man promises to free him from this awful place, the words filling him with a joy he hasn't felt in decades. It will be over soon, he will be at rest, no more waking nightmare..._

_But when he comes out of the darkness again, his body is still on display. Another place, different faces, but still a public mockery. Why did that man lie to him? Why would Tall Bird permit this? He shouts these questions endlessly for months, until he feels the last threads of sanity within him break. After that, he is numb. He stares but sees nothing, hears words that are only so much noise. When men come and pack him inside a wooden crate, blocking his view of what's around him, he doesn't care. It is better this way, just shut out the world instead of letting it hurt him even more. If he has to spend eternity like this, it will be on his own terms._

_Inside the crate, there is no time. Months, years, decades...they are words without meaning. There is simply now, and now does not change. It is constant. It is comforting. It does not remind him of who he was or is, and therefore does not challenge the illusion that he's built around himself...until something happens that forces him to remember._

_It is a voice. A voice from within and without. It drills into his soul with such precision that he cries out, trying to pull away from the message it brings. Five simple words:_

_**[Jonah Hex of Earth...RISE]**_

_And something forces its way into the crate, something small and black. It latches onto his left ring finger and the black begins to spread across his body, cracking open every desiccated cell and flooding into them and remaking them into God-knows-what. Then the black invades his soul, speaking to him without words about a war, a war between the dead and the living, and how it wants to recruit him. He fights at first, but it keeps pushing further and further into his soul, wearing him down, and soon it overwhelms him, smothering any desire to resist._

_When it is done, he is unaware of where he ends and the black begins. It has stripped away the humiliating costume and given him back his proper attire, albeit with a few modifications. It whispers in his mind, telling him to make a fist, to smash through the wood, and he does so, feeling no amazement over the act. He sees the inside of a warehouse, and though the lights are dim, he can make out everything in perfect detail...except for color. To his new eyes, the world is nothing but blacks and whites and grays. This strikes him as strange, but the force that has invaded him will not let him think about it. Instead, it makes him walk through the warehouse, searching for a way out. Then he spots a spark of color, a dim green in the shape of a man dressed like a guard. The man sees him, and the green dissolves away into yellow as the man draws a gun and shoots him, but again, he feels nothing. He grabs hold of the man, and the black tells him to drive his fist into the man's chest, and he does so. He pulls out the man's heart, which is dripping with blood like liquid gold, and black tells him to feed._

_And he does so._

* * *

"You hungry?"

Jonah looks over at the open driver's-side door. Maggie had pulled the rig into a gas station to fuel up, and after setting the pumps to work, she'd poked her head back into the cab to pose her query. "There's a little diner in there," she elaborated, pointing at a building across the blacktop. "Not the best food I've ever had, but it beats reheated mac and cheese."

"Ah ain't got..."

"Any money," Maggie finished for him. "I know that, but I figured since you're already mooching a ride off of me, I might as well offer you a meal to go along with it." She held up a finger. "Just don't order the most expensive thing on the menu, okay?"

He cast his eyes down for a moment, as if ashamed of her hospitality, then said, "Okay."

Once the tank was full, Maggie parked the eighteen-wheeler over by a cluster of other rigs, and the two of them walked to the diner. The sun had been down for about an hour by then, but the sodium lights ringing the area lit their path with a stark white glare. Despite her insistence that it would be perfectly safe within the cab, Jonah kept the gray bundle tucked beneath his arm. She wondered what it was that made him so protective of it.

Moments after walking into the diner, Jonah paused, took a deep breath through his nose and smiled - it was the first time Maggie had seen him smile since she'd picked him up. "Lord, it's been a long time since Ah smelled thet," he whispered.

Maggie took a sniff of her own, then asked, "What's that? The fried chicken?"

"Yeah." She'd never heard so much longing packed into the word.

"Well, I guess I know what you're ordering." They made their way to an empty booth and took a seat. As they waited for a server to come by, Maggie noticed Jonah looking all about the diner, just as he'd done inside her truck. It would have seemed a nervous gesture were it not for the intensity in those eyes as they flicked from one place to the next. The thought that this guy might be on the run from the cops entered her mind again, but the arrival of a familiar face at their table drove it away. "Hey, Rita, how you been?" she said with a smile.

"Same old, same old." Rita the waitress pushed a lock of peroxide-blonde hair from her face with the end of her pen, then poised it over her order pad. "Start with coffee, like usual?"

"An' some fried chicken," Jonah interjected with some eagerness.

Rita looked at him as if she hadn't noticed him sitting there. "Well, now...who's the young stud, Mags?"

Jonah's eyebrows went up at the comment, and Maggie said, "Just a stray I picked up. You interested in buying him?"

"Nah, I probably couldn't afford him." She laughed when she saw the growing look of concern on Jonah's face. "Oh, honey, you don't think we're _serious_, do you?"

"Ain't rightly sure," he replied, and that got both ladies laughing. Jonah felt his cheeks flush, and turned his head away to hide it.

Maggie waved a hand, saying, "All right, Rita, we'd better lay off the new boy. Just dig up two chicken dinners for us, and..." She looked at Jonah. "You want coffee or something else?" Jonah only shrugged, so she said, "I guess that's two coffees."

"Okay, then...back in a sec with the coffee." Rita walked off, jotting the order down.

Jonah's head was still turned away, and Maggie leaned towards him and said, "You don't need to sulk like that. We were just making a joke."

"Ah don't find talk of buyin' folks very funny."

The words came out with a hard edge to them, making Maggie pull back slowly. She knew nothing about this man, but something about the way he said that suggested he was speaking from experience. It also suggested that she'd better not push the subject any further.

Rita came with the coffee, and Jonah took his and drank it in silence, not bothering with sugar and cream like Maggie. His eyes resumed their wandering as he drained his cup, eventually settling upon some point at the counter across the aisle from where they sat. He got up and spoke in a low voice to a man sitting at the counter - Maggie watched as the man handed Jonah a folded-up newspaper, which he then brought back to the booth. Laying it on the table between them, Maggie saw it was a copy of the _Los Angeles Times_. Splashed across the front page was a photo of a group of superheroes - some injured, a couple looking somewhat confused - with THE MORNING AFTER printed above it in large type. Jonah ran his finger down the column of story running alongside it, pausing here and there as he presumably mulled over some bit of information. Once he had read over the entire front page, he opened the paper and continued his finger-guided perusal, ignoring what was left of his coffee. It wasn't until Rita dropped off the pair of chicken dinners that he set the paper aside. Jonah tore into his meal with gusto, eating like he was on the brink of starvation. Every few bites, he'd pause to rub a hand across his right cheek, as if wiping something away. Through it all, Maggie waited for Jonah to say something, anything, but he remained silent. Finally, after taking a few bites of her chicken, she decided to take the plunge.

"Where were you last night?" she asked. Jonah looked at her, but said nothing, so she gestured towards the picture on the front page and said, "During all that...that nightmare."

He chewed his mouthful of chicken, swallowed, then replied, "Ah'd rather not say."

"Pretty bad?"

Instead of answering, Jonah's gaze dipped down to the tabletop. After a moment, he asked, "Did y'all see any of it?"

"I saw enough. I was picking up the load I'm hauling now when the reports started coming over the radio...me and the guys at the warehouse laughed it off until we actually saw a group of them heading our way."

"A lot of 'em?"

"A dozen, maybe twenty...hard to tell in the dark. We ran inside the warehouse and rolled down the doors, then we all clustered around the CCTV monitor and watched them go by. Then more came by, and more, like a...a herd. Some of them broke off and began to bang on the doors, and we're all trying to call out or text on our cells, but the system must have crashed in the panic." Her fingers knotted together on the tabletop as she said, "We thought it was the end of the world. I mean, it _had_ to be: the dead were walking, so how could it _not _be the end?"

Jonah reached out and laid his hand over hers - a rather tender gesture - and said quietly, "It wasn't the end of the world, least not the proper end. Weren't no Rapture or angels with trumpets, just bad folks doin' whut bad folks do. The important thing is, it's all over. Yuh don't have tuh be afraid no more."

"I'm not afraid, I'm just..."

"Yo're afraid," he said with certainty. "Yuh cain't hide it from me."

Maggie took a deep breath. "Maybe...maybe a little afraid. An experience like that is going to be hard to shake."

He nodded. "Ah cain't argue with thet."

* * *

_The town is on fire, the old decrepit buildings going up like kindling. They would have collapsed long ago if Joshua Turnbull hadn't been so adamant about holding on to his family's past. But now Joshua is dead, just like the rest of his line, so the town of Illumination burns._

_He remembers what the place looked like when he first laid eyes on it over a century ago. He didn't come for sightseeing, then or now, but images of it remain in his memory nonetheless. He also remembers what happened back then, the thought of it stirring emotions within his soul. They don't last long, however: the black rises up and snuffs them out, regaining control of him. It does not want him to think of other things, only the task it has set him upon._

_He watches as the corpse of Quentin Turnbull tears out Joshua's heart - it seems only fitting that a family member should have the feast. Laying beside Joshua's body is a blindingly-bright cube, a black ring trapped within it. This is his goal, and he kneels down to pick it up. Like the rings of all the other walking dead, he feels a connection to this one, and he can hear it speak. But unlike the other rings, this one speaks of how the body it was meant for is unwilling to join the fight. Don Hall's body will not rise. It has found peace._

_Peace...ever since his soul woke up within his stuffed and mounted corpse, he has longed for peace, for eternal rest. The black has been trying to convince him that death and peace are the same thing, and that life is the aberration, but he knows this isn't true. If it was, then why has his soul been in such torment since his death? Why did this Hall person reject the chance to supposedly spread the level of peace that it had already achieved? As he gazes at the entrapped ring, these questions grow larger in his mind, the power of his dissent causing the black to withdraw slightly from his soul. He realizes there is a chance that, if he can concentrate hard enough, he might be able to drive it out completely and regain control of himself. But his rebellious thoughts catch the attention of the other corpses in Illumination, and they begin to gather around him. They are different from him: their souls have all moved on, leaving behind empty bodies for the rings to inhabit. He knows all their faces - Turnbull, Bat Lash, Nighthawk, Cinnamon, El Papagayo, Johnny Thunder - but no matter how they talk and act, he knows they are merely echoes of the people they once were. They do not object to the plans laid before them like he does, for they have no individual minds to object with. They are one, united to the cause of their master Nekron, and they will not tolerate a traitor in their midst._

_They raise their guns, and they begin to fire upon him with bullets made not of lead but of pure black energy, eliminating the need to reload. The bullets rip through his body and down into his soul, bolstering the black already within him. He is drowning in it, but he still clings to that one beautiful notion. Peace, he wants peace, real peace...and then the word begins to fade from his mind, until he does not know what it means. He only knows what Nekron wants him to know: the dead shall overpower the living all across the universe, and nothing shall stand in the way of that, not even the desires of a man for whom Death itself has been a constant companion._

_The black tells him to stand, and he does so. It conjures up a horse for him to ride, just as dead as himself, and he black tells him that he must prove his loyalty to the cause by delivering the entrapped ring to their master. His skeletal head nods in understanding, then he mounts up, cradling the glowing cube to his chest, and turns the horse westward._

_Coast City is a long way off, but the Blackest Night has only just begun._

* * *

"You figured out where you want to go yet?" Maggie asked as they walked back to the rig. "If Arizona's to your liking, you're more than welcome to stick with me. Anyplace else...well, you'd better start asking some of the other truckers around here."

"Ah ain't really thought about it," Jonah answered with a shrug. "It's been so long since anybody's given me a choice 'bout whut tuh do with muhself."

Maggie bit her bottom lip, silently debating with herself, then said, "You know, I hate to bring it up again, but...are you on the run? Not just from the cops, but from anybody. Because some of the things you've said tonight, and the way you act..." She gestured to the gray bundle Jonah once again clutched with both hands. "If you need help, just tell me."

He lowered his head. "Ah ain't one tuh ask fer help."

"That much is obvious." She laid a hand on his shoulder, and they stopped walking. "Look, I don't offer to help out every stranger I meet, but you...you just look like somebody who's got nowhere else in the world to turn to. You don't have to tell me the whole story, but at least tell me if I'm on the right track."

Jonah lifted his head and looked at her with those too-old eyes - she tried to imagine what sort of horrors he could have gone through to give him eyes like that. Seconds ticked by, but he said nothing, eventually turning his head away to look towards where the eighteen-wheelers were parked. Then those too-old eyes narrowed, filling with a look at made Maggie's blood run cold. Fearful, she pulled her hand away from him and said, "I'm sorry, I just..."

"Yo're not the problem," Jonah said with a growl. "Somebody's messin' with yer truck."

"What?" She turned to look, but could see nothing: though there were lights all over the parking lot, the other rigs cast long shadows across her own vehicle, obscuring her view. She was about to ask Jonah how he could tell, but before the words got out, he shoved the gray bundle at her roughly, then took off at a run with some oblong object in his hand - it took a second for her to realize it was a gun. "Oh my God," she gasped, then took off after him.

As she got closer, she could see a group of four men clustered around the back end of her rig. The rolling door had been opened halfway, and there were a few boxes laying on the ground next to a small van parked alongside. That didn't surprise her too much - she'd known many truckers who'd had their cargo boosted - but the sight of Jonah boldly standing before them like a gunfighter at high noon certainly gave her pause. "Ah may be new 'round these parts," he was saying to them, "but Ah know thieves when Ah see 'em. So do yerselves a favor an' skedaddle afore things get ugly."

The four men looked at each other, then burst out laughing. "Dude, are you drunk?" one of them said, with another adding, "You sound like Clint Eastwood on crack!"

"Ah'll give yuh a crack, yuh damn hyenas!" Jonah fired his gun at them, the bullets smacking into the blacktop at their feet. Maggie was relieved that he wasn't aiming directly at them, but she knew that might change rather quick. She called out to him to stop, but either he ignored her or he couldn't hear over the roar of the gun. And it was a _big_ gun: a heavy-looking antique revolver, which to her surprise kept spitting out bullets even though she was sure she'd counted off more than six rounds already. All the while, the thieves were scattering across the blacktop as Jonah continued to shoot at them with incredible precision, never taking a kill-shot but instead letting the bullets whiz past and miss them by mere inches. Then one of the thieves briefly took cover behind the van - when he emerged, Maggie saw he now had a gun of his own.

"Jonah, look out!" she yelled, and ironically, this time he heard her and turned his head, only to have the thief land a bullet directly in the back of Jonah's skull. Blood and gray matter spurted out of the hole the bullet made as it exited his forehead. For a moment, his body stayed upright, then he collapsed in a heap. Maggie stood stock-still, gaping at Jonah's dead body, then she heard one of the thieves yell at his companion to shoot her too. That got her moving, and she ducked behind a nearby truck, clutching the gray bundle to her chest just as tightly as Jonah had before. She could hear the thieves arguing over whether they should pursue her or just cut and run, and she prayed for the latter as her eyes wandered over to Jonah's body, which she could see clearly from her hiding spot. A pool of blood was forming beneath what was left of his skull, staining his formerly-pristine shirt red.

Then she saw Jonah's hand twitch as the red blood slowly turned black.


	2. Back in Black

**BACK IN BLACK**

Maggie felt like she was trapped in a nightmare. First it was the sheer insanity of last night, with the sight of all those corpses getting up and walking like some late-show horror flick. And now she was hunkered down in a shadow of a big rig as a group of thieves debated the merits of chasing her down and shooting her. They'd already killed the hitchhiker she'd picked up a few hours ago, an odd-acting fellow named Jonah, and his dead body was laying not too far away on the blacktop...though as she stared at it, she began to think that perhaps Jonah wasn't as dead as he looked.

Part of his head was gone, that was certain, and there was a massive amount of luridly-red blood pooling beneath it. But as she watched from her hiding spot, the blood turned black as midnight, then began to flow back towards the head, spreading over the horrid wound and reconstructing the skull. During all this, Jonah's red hair turned white, and his skin became pale and dry, shrinking onto the bones to reveal all their hidden angles - on the right side of his face, the skin seemed to tear itself apart, leaving only ragged strips of flesh, while the left remained intact. All the while, the fingers on Jonah's hands twitched, then flexed, and Maggie bit down on her knuckles to keep from screaming as the corpse that had once been a young man known as Jonah began to push itself upright. She could hear one of the thieves hollering now, and saw a volley of bullets smack into Jonah's corpse, which ignored the assault as he picked up his blood-spattered cowboy hat. Only once that was settled upon his head again did he turn to the thieves and say in a unearthly voice, "_Ah tried tuh be nice 'bout this, but now yuh done riled me up!_"

The bullets started flying out of Jonah's gun again, and Maggie heard the thieves crying out in agony as every bullet found its mark this time. He advanced on them, moving out of her point of view, and it wasn't until the gun went silent that she dared come out to look. Sure enough, all four thieves lay on the ground dead, with Jonah's reanimated corpse standing amidst them. She half-expected their bodies to get up as well, but thankfully they didn't. When he turned to look at her, she froze, unsure of what he might do. "_Yuh okay, Maggie?_" he asked, to which she could only respond with a vague choking noise. "_Whut's wrong? Are yuh hurt?_"

There was genuine concern in his voice, belying his nightmarish appearance, but when he stretched out his hand and started to move towards her, she blurted out, "Don't touch me!"

He paused, a look of confusion somehow manifesting on his desiccated face, then he caught sight of his own hand. Slowly, he brought it up and touched the right side of his face, and to Maggie's shock, Jonah began to sob, "_No...please, Lord, no more of this..._"

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw people running their way, and Maggie turned towards them. It was mostly truckers from the restaurant, along with a few employees. Rita the waitress came right up to her and said, "What the Hell's going on over here, Mags? Somebody said they heard gunshots!"

One of the truckers walked past the two women. "Holy...somebody call the cops!" he yelled, then said to Maggie, "Christ, did you do all that?"

Maggie was surprised nobody was commenting on the walking corpse standing there, but when she turned around, she realized why: Jonah was nowhere to be seen. She called his name, but he didn't reappear, and when she tried to explain to Rita and the others what had happened, they seemed to think she was on the verge of hysterics. In a way she was: just when she thought the horrors she'd seen the night before were over, they rise up again to menace her. As she waited alone in the diner's back office for the cops to show up, she did her best to rationalize it. Perhaps the bullet had merely grazed Jonah's head, and in a panic, her mind imagined the rest. But why imagine _that_? And with such detail? It was during this time that she realized she was still holding onto the bundle Jonah had shoved into her hands. Until he'd spotted those thieves, Jonah had clutched that lumpy gray cloth to his chest as if his life depended upon it. Hoping for some distraction from all this, however brief, she laid it on the floor and unrolled it.

Inside the bundle was a leather cowboy-style gunbelt, with a massive ivory-handled revolver - identical to the one she'd seen Jonah wielding - tucked into the holster. The bundle itself was really a short coat made of gray wool, with brass buttons running down the front and gold braid on the collar and cuffs - she recalled seeing a similar gold braid with tassels on Jonah's hat. Something about all this pricked at her brain, but she couldn't puzzle it out until she remembered another odd item Jonah wore: a brass belt buckle with the initials CS stamped on it.

"CS...Confederate States..." Maggie slapped both hands over her mouth, her eyes wide. _He didn't know what a seatbelt was_, she thought. _He kept staring at everything. He thought we were serious when I joked about selling him to Rita. And that thick-as-molasses accent...he wasn't just a dead man, he was a dead Civil War soldier!_

Her brain was still coming to grips with that revelation by the time the cops arrived. Maggie didn't tell them about any of it, though, nor did she show them the items Jonah had left behind: she knew the whole thing sounded like that old urban legend about the ghostly hitchhiker, and didn't want them to write her off as crazy. She did tell them about picking him up along the side of the road, and about how he shot those four men - the parking lot's security camera backed her up on that one - but that was all. After a few hours of questioning her and inspecting her truck, the cops let her hit the road, for which Maggie was thankful. The sooner she got away from there, the sooner she could put that madness behind her. Of course, that's what she'd thought about the events of the previous night as well.

Despite her desire to forget, Maggie held onto Jonah's belongings, even going to far as to roll them up neatly again, just as she'd first seen them. Part of her was screaming to throw them away, but another part wanted to hold onto them, if only to give herself tangible proof that she hadn't completely lost her mind. So she laid the bundle on the passenger seat after climbing back into the cab, then threw the rig into gear. The CD player started up again as she drove down the night-shrouded highway, and about ten miles away from the diner, the gentle strum of guitar strings came out of the stereo speakers, and Elvis began to sing:

"_Oh I wish I was...in the land of cotton_

_Old times there are not forgotten_

_Look away...look away...look away, Dixieland."_

_An American Trilogy_. She'd listened to that song dozens of times, yet she'd never paid attention to the fact that the first part was a mournful rendition of that old Southern favorite. Hearing it now, however, after her experience with Jonah...it was just too much. She slapped her hand repeatedly against the player until she managed to turn it off, all the while feeling like she was about to shake apart. _Stop it_, she silently chided herself. _Stop it right now, it's all over. Whatever Jonah was, he's gone now, so just stop..._

"Turn the music back on. Ah actually know thet one."

A shriek ripped out of Maggie's mouth. She slammed on the brakes, turning the wheel to the right and leaving black tire marks behind her as the truck slid to the side of the road. The sudden stop caused Jonah to fall through the curtain behind her seat and crack his head against the dash. As he lay on the floor of the cab groaning, Maggie threw the driver's-side door open and leapt out, but not before reaching beneath the seat and grabbing the .38 out of its holster. Swinging it up towards the open door, she hollered, "Get out of my damn truck! Right now!"

Jonah stumbled out, hands in the air. He looked perfectly normal again, save for the deathly-pale gashes on his cheek and forehead from smacking into the dashboard. As he moved away from the door and towards the front of the truck, Maggie walked backwards, keeping a good ten feet between herself and Jonah. "You're one of them, aren't you?" she asked. "One of those walking corpses from last night."

"Ah was, but now...now Ah ain't sure whut Ah am." While he talked, the gashes on his face changed from a mangled mess of gray and black to smooth, unscarred flesh. "Ah knew thet something was wrong, but Ah didn't know how much 'til thet fella shot me." He paused, then said, "Ah didn't mean tuh scare yuh."

"Are you _nuts_? First you turn into a freaking zombie, then you hide in the back of my truck so you can pop out like the boogeyman, and now you say you didn't mean to _scare_ me?" She motioned towards the rig with the barrel of her gun, saying, "How'd you sneak in there with all those cops around, anyways? Did you make like a ghost and turn invisible or something?"

"Nope, Ah'm just good at bein' sneaky. Besides, whut'd y'all expect me tuh do? Yuh had muh stuff."

"Yeah, and I looked at your stuff too, and it sure explains why you were acting so funny: you've been dead since the Civil War. Considering that was over 140 years ago, I'm surprised you didn't die all over again from culture shock."

"First off, Ah didn't die in the War," Jonah replied with a hint of annoyance. "Ah died in 1904...thet's only a hunnert an' six years ago, thank yuh kindly. Secondly, compared tuh the _last _time Ah had tuh deal with this damn century, muh day so far has been a cakewalk."

Maggie stared at him, wondering what he meant by 'the last time', then said, "Who the Hell are you? And if you really were a _corpse_ last night, why are you suddenly _alive_?"

"Muh name is Jonah Woodson Hex," he said, "an' Ah don't rightly know _why _Ah'm alive again...but Ah've got a decent notion 'bout the _how_, if'n yo're willin' tuh listen."

She said that she was, so he told her.

* * *

_The dead are everywhere, shuffling towards the city like a rippling sea of gray. They overwhelm anyone living that stands in their way, some of whom later get up to join the migration. He guides his mount through this, occasionally drawing one of his Dragoons to shoot at one of the specks of color that indicates a soul still alive within this madness. He feels nothing when he does this: the black has smothered every ounce of humanity left within him. Only his mission matters to him now, his only desire being to lay the unclaimed ring at his master's feet. After that is accomplished, he will turn his guns fully upon those that directly oppose Nekron, those that obscenely bear their colors for all to witness. He knows one of them from his life long ago, and the black takes his memories of those days and begins to warp them so that, should the opportunity arise, he may use them to poison his former friend's soul._

_Coast City is still a few hundred miles away, but he can see and feel the battle through his connection to the other black rings. In his mind's eye, he watches his master pull the Entity out of its hiding place deep within the Earth, and how the so-called "heroes" try to save it from destruction. Exhilarated by the inevitable victory, he spurs his horse to go faster, not caring about his fellow dead soldiers that are trampled beneath its hooves. Behind him, his cohorts from Illumination follow upon their own mounts, a morbid cavalry riding to their master's aid._

_Then, to his disbelief, the tide of battle turns, and he screams in agony as the black itself is corrupted by the accursed white light. A shockwave of brilliance rolls out from the epicenter of Coast City, causing every corpse it touches to fall to ash. He sees it coming, and he braces himself for the impact, holding tight to both the reins and the entrapped ring. But before the shockwave reaches him, he sees a tiny spark of white speeding ahead of it, and as it gets closer, he hears a voice, remarkably similar to the one he'd heard when the black first took hold of him:_

_**[Jonah Hex of Earth...LI-]**_

_The last word is cut off as the white ring crashes through the glowing cube he still cradles to his chest. Not slowing down, it impacts with the black ring trapped inside, and both are driven into his ribcage with such force that he flies out of his saddle. As he hits the ground, the shockwave sweeps over the area, obliterating first his horse, then all his dead compadres. He is too absorbed by his own pains to notice: vitality returns to dead flesh, organs regenerate, fresh blood flows through new veins, and most importantly, the black ring upon his finger shatters, severing his connection to the force that possessed him._

_He lays there with his eyes closed, listening to the air pumping in and out of his lungs, feeling his heart beating strong and sure within his chest. After being dead for so long, these things seem alien to him. Slowly, he sits up, and the first thing he does is touch his face: the scars are gone, as are the wrinkles of old age, and a mix of confusion and elation floods through him. He opens his eyes now, blinking repeatedly as a breeze sprinkles ash into them. The desert landscape around him is nothing but blacks and whites and grays, just as it had been before. He thinks at first this is because of the ash swirling all about, but then he looks down at his hands and sees that they are a pulsing shade of blue, which soon turns into a riot of yellow as he begins to scream, not stopping until the dawn finally arrives to dispel the night._

* * *

"So far as Ah know, Ah was the only one tuh walk out of thet desert alive." Jonah's hands were still in the air, as Maggie hadn't lowered her gun in the least. "Of course, after whut happened tonight, Ah ain't so sure if'n the word 'alive' applies tuh me." He tapped his breastbone, saying, "Ah think thet other black ring done fouled things up in here."

"But why you? Millions...maybe _billions_ of corpses got up and walked last night, so why did _you_ get a second chance at life and not _them_?"

"Ah already told yuh, _Ah don't know why_. Maybe it's 'cause muh soul hadn't moved on like all the rest, or maybe it was just dumb luck. Personally, Ah wouldn't have picked me neither: Ah've known a lot of good folks over the years thet didn't deserve tuh die, an' Ah'd gladly give muh place tuh them if'n Ah could." He shook his head with a sigh. "Ah ain't gonna pretend thet Ah had the best life the first time around, but it was a long one, an' Ah reckon thet Ah don't have much desire tuh trudge through this world all over again."

"What are you saying? That you'd rather be _dead_? You get an incredible gift like this, and you want to just throw it away?"

"Funny...a few minutes ago, y'all didn't seem too keen on me bein' here, an' now yo're upset thet Ah agree with yuh." Jonah huffed, "Nice tuh know women are still flighty."

"That's not what I meant," Maggie replied, then rolled her eyes. "God, I can't believe I'm arguing about this."

"Yo're arguin' 'cause yuh got good reason tuh do so. Yuh lost somebody thet meant the world tuh y'all...somebody who yuh'd much rather be talkin' tuh right now than an old saddle-bum like me." He lowered his hands and began to walk towards her, saying, "An' don't try tuh deny it: Ah kin see how yo're feelin' plain as day."

Maggie jabbed the air between them with the gun. "Stop! Don't come near me or..."

"We already know thet won't work." Jonah reached out and put his hand over her gun, easing it down. "Yuh asked me afore if'n Ah needed help, an' Ah reckon Ah do...but Ah also reckon thet y'all need a bit of help yerself."

"What do you..." she began to say, then flinched as he brushed a lock of hair away from her face. "Don't...I don't want..."

"Yes yuh do. Yuh just don't want it from me, is all." He leaned close to her and whispered, "Ah cain't give yuh Jeff back, but Ah kin give yuh this in his stead." He then pressed his lips hard against hers, delivering a kiss full of passion and longing, the sort that could only be given by someone who had spent an eternity in the clutches of death, and now knew how precious every second of life really was.

Maggie resisted at first, then let herself get swept up in the moment - by the time Jonah picked her up into his arms and carried her to the bunk in the back of the rig, her head was swimming from the rush of emotions brought on by his advances. As they made love, she thought of Jeff's face, still young and handsome, and for a while, Maggie felt young herself. Jonah remained silent throughout it all, not wanting to spoil the illusion in her mind, or perhaps he was caught up in a illusion of his own, a bittersweet dream of the woman he'd left behind a century ago.

After they were done, Maggie slept, visions of Jeff and days gone by still floating through her mind. She had no desire to ever wake up again, but she eventually did, and was surprised to find that she was in bed alone. Then she saw that the curtain leading to the front of the cab was partially open, and Jonah was sitting in the passenger's seat. Maggie got off the bunk and slipped her shirt back on, then joined him up front. "You all right?" she asked as she sat down in the driver's seat.

"Right as rain." He was fully dressed again, right down to his dusty boots - there were bullet holes in his shirt and the long underwear beneath, but neither of them bore a speck of blood. "Just don't feel like sleepin'...it reminds me too much of bein' dead."

His words hit Maggie like a dash of cold water, and she decided to change the subject. Spying the section of newspaper laying in his lap, she said, "Still catching up on current events?"

"Nope, just thinkin'." He tapped the picture on the front page, which he'd stuffed in his pocket before they left the diner. "'Bout an old friend of mine, mostly."

She leaned over to see where his finger was resting. "Who, Green Lantern?" He nodded, and she asked, "How do you even know who he is if you've been dead for a hundred years?"

"It's a very long, very complicated story, an' Ah don't feel much like tellin' it right now," he replied. "The important thing is thet Ah do know him, an' he knows me, an' his green butt was right in the middle of thet mess last night." He tapped the paper again. "So if'n there's any way tuh fix whut's wrong with me, Ah reckon he'd be the one thet knows how tuh do it."

"Well, if you want to find Green Lantern, there's only one place for us to go: Coast City." She waved a hand towards the moonlit road beyond the windshield. "I've still got make this delivery to Arizona, but once that's done, we'll turn..." She paused when she saw Jonah shaking his head. "What? What's wrong?"

"Ah cain't let yuh get involved in this any more than yuh already have, Maggie."

"Why not? It's obvious that you can't do this alone: you're broke, you're on foot, you've been out of touch with the world for over a century..."

"Ah know all thet, dammit! Don't yuh think Ah've already..." Jonah clenched his jaw tight until he'd reined back his anger, then he said, "The main reason Ah don't want yuh involved is because of whut's happened afore with me, back in...back in muh other life. Folks tended tuh die around me, especially ones thet Ah cared about. It was like a damn curse." His gaze drifted to the floor of the cab. "With Lantern, it's dif'rent...the man's like me, he kin handle damn-near anything yuh throw at him. But yo're an innocent party in all this, so Ah ain't gonna risk yer life just tuh make things easier on me."

"Hate to tell you this, but one of the things you missed was women's lib. We're not all helpless little lambs these days."

"Never said yuh were. Still, it ain't right fer me tuh pull yuh along. This is muh own problem, not yers...y'all don't have one bit of responsibility over whut happens tuh me."

"But Jeff..."

Jonah looked up at her, and Maggie suddenly realized her mistake. "An' thet's the other reason," he told her quietly.

She didn't argue with him any more after that. She did, however, insist on driving him to the nearest exit heading west. By the time they reached it, the sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon, bringing a warm orange glow to the landscape. Maggie pulled the rig over about a quarter-mile before the exit, then hopped out with Jonah. "This'll take you up to the surface roads," she explained as they stood on the gravel shoulder, "which is a lot safer than walking alongside the highway. And remember..." She took his hand and bent his fingers into a fist with the thumb sticking out. "If you want a ride, hold this out where the drivers can see it. Not everybody stops for random guys on the side of the road like me. Okay?"

"Okay." Jonah's eyes wandered off for a moment, then he said, "This ain't easy fer me tuh say, but...thank yuh, Maggie. Fer last night...an' fer this." He tugged at the duffle bag slung over his shoulder: it contained not only his Dragoons and other belongings, but an old blanket, some packaged food, and a map of California with a route to Coast City clearly marked upon it.

"Well, if you're not going to let me take you, I had to at least make sure you'd survive the trip," she said with a smile. "Now, you've got my cell number in your pocket, right? When this is all said and done, I want you to call me so I know you're okay."

"Don't worry, Ah will. Matter of fact..." He unzipped the bag and pulled out his Confederate-gray coat. "Y'all hold onto this fer me, just tuh be sure."

"Oh, Jonah, you don't have to do that."

"Ah _want_ tuh do it. Besides, Ah ain't rightly sure Ah should keep the thing." He draped it around her shoulders, saying, "Ah've worn it through two wars now, an' both times Ah was on the losin' side...reckon thet's as good a reason as any tuh give it up."

Maggie gazed up at Jonah's face. Now that she knew why his eyes looked so old, and why he looked so lost, the memory of what she saw the night before no longer frightened her. Instead, she felt a sense of wonder thinking about how this man had traveled through life and death and back to life again. She did indeed wish that it was Jeff that had gotten the second chance, but Jonah's journey offered her proof of one of life's great mysteries - the existence of a soul - which meant that, when Maggie died, there was a strong possibility that she and Jeff would be together again. How do you thank someone for giving you such hope like that? There was no proper way, so she settled for a more common show of gratitude: a warm, loving kiss, which Jonah returned in kind.

After saying their goodbyes, Maggie turned to walk back to the truck. Across the road, the eastern sky had become a glorious mix of reds and oranges and yellows, and she paused to look back over her shoulder and say to him, "Looks like it's going to be a beautiful day."

His eyes fixed on the dawn, Jonah replied, "Ah cain't see it."

Maggie felt a chill run through her when he spoke those words, but she managed to keep a smile upon her face nonetheless. As she started the rig back up, she watched Jonah walk towards the exit ramp, all stiff shoulders and long-legged stride, just like the first time she'd seen him. She hoped that he'd be okay on his own, and that he'd find the Green Lantern and get the help he needed, but most of all, she hoped that she heard from him again.

As the days passed, Maggie settled back into her usual routine, shuttling cargo from one destination to the next. Whenever she saw a bit of news regarding what they were now calling the Blackest Night, she'd pay close attention and think of Jonah. The day she learned that twelve other people had apparently been resurrected as well, she smiled and thought, _Jonah got to be lucky thirteen_. She still didn't know why he and the others had come back - nor if these other twelve had the same problem Jonah had - but she felt better now knowing that he wasn't alone in this. One resurrection was odd enough, but thirteen? There had to be something to this, some pattern. She wished Jonah would call her so they could discuss this, but every time the cell rang, it wasn't him. She began to worry that something had happened to him, and she'd never know it.

A week after the Blackest Night, Maggie was in California again, on the same highway she'd picked Jonah up on. She stopped at the same diner, though she soon wished she hadn't: Rita and a few others were watching her the whole time, like she was some sort of alien that had strolled in from Venus for a bite to eat. She knew why they were staring, but that didn't mean she liked it, especially since she knew the truth about that night one week ago and they didn't. So Maggie ate quickly and got out, deciding that she would never stop there again, even though she'd been a regular there for over a decade.

The sun was down, and Maggie walked through the dark maze of trucks to her rig. When she got there, she was surprised to find the driver's-side window smashed and the door ajar. "Oh no, not again," she whispered. She considered going back to the diner for help, but she didn't want to endure their stares again, so she slowly eased the door open until she could pull her .38 out from under the seat, then she called out, "Okay, buddy, if you're still in there, you'd better step out right now." No sound came from inside the cab. "Look, I'm coming up, and I'm armed, so don't get any ideas!" Maggie climbed up over the seat, gun held in front of her, and stood before the closed curtain. "Last chance!" she said, though by now, she was beginning to think that whomever had decided to play smash-and-grab was long gone.

Then the curtains parted, and Jonah's Confederate-gray coat - shredded almost beyond recognition - was tossed through. As Maggie looked down at it in shock, an unearthly voice growled from behind the curtain, _"Where is he?"_

Maggie only managed to say, "What..." before a pair of deathly-pale hands reached out and yanked her through the curtain.

_**NEXT ISSUE: It's Old Home Week for Jonah Hex as he makes a "Return to Paradise"!**_


	3. Return to Paradise

**RETURN TO PARADISE**

_***Note: This story takes place before the events of Brightest Day #4.***_

"Okay, _now_ where have you dropped me?" Boston Brand, once a Deadman but now very much alive, looked around as the white light that had enveloped him dissipated. For the past day or so (he _thought_ it had only been a day, he wasn't sure), the white ring that had latched onto his hand had been dragging him from one place to the next, the only link between them all being the presence of someone who, like himself, was lucky enough to have been resurrected after the Blackest Night. Twelve people, hero and villain alike, brought back to life for some unknown reason. Boston thought perhaps the ring was trying to show him the reason, but if that was the case, it was doing a horrible job so far. Take his current pit-stop, for instance: he was standing in the middle of a deserted two-lane road, bordered on either side by vacant fields. Dawn was just beginning to break, casting a warm, red-gold glow over everything. "Very pretty," Boston said, "but I don't get it. What am I supposed to be seeing here?"

**[Balance]**, the white ring answered.

"Want to clarify that a little more?" Before the ring could do so, Boston heard a groan come from the field to his right. Thinking someone might be hurt, he started to head towards the noise, which seemed to be located near a stout tree about fifteen feet away from the roadside. He soon spotted a young man curled up in a blanket laying beneath it, with a duffle bag and a gray cowboy hat sitting right beside him. The man's face was pinched as he groaned and thrashed in his sleep. "Is this your idea of 'balance'? Some guy having a nightmare?" Boston asked the ring, and he wasn't surprised when he didn't receive an answer.

Suddenly, the young man jerked upright, panting like he'd just run a marathon as he stared at the world around him with wide, frightened eyes. Then he placed a hand on the right side of his face, and somehow the action calmed him. All the while, Boston examined every aspect of the man in the hope that he could figure out why he'd been brought here, but to no avail. To Boston's eyes, the man was a nobody, a stranger, not important in the least...but if that was the case, then why did the white ring bring him here to see the man? "This would be a lot easier if you'd just let me talk to people," Boston grumbled.

As the words left Boston's mouth, the man stiffened, then looked directly over to where he stood. This was quite a shock to Boston, as he hadn't been able to interact with anyone since the white ring started bouncing him all around the place. But before he could take advantage to the possible connection he'd made with the young man, the white light began to envelop Boston once more, pulling him away from there. "No, not yet!" Boston yelled as everything began to fade from view. "Let me at least find out who he is first!"

**[Balance]**, the white ring replied, cryptic as ever.

* * *

Jonah Hex stared at the spot where the brilliantly-white figure had been, trying to decide whether what he'd seen was a remnant of his nightmare or some new side-effect of his altered vision. To be sure, there was nothing there now, so he chalked it up to the former and tried to put it out of his mind as he surveyed the rest of the landscape, which was the same monochromatic hue it had been when he'd gone to sleep the night before. Ever since Jonah's resurrection three days ago, the only colors he could see were the ones generated by the emotional state of any living creature, with the rest of the world being rendered in a dull palette. To his eyes, the rising sun in the east was nothing but a vibrant white sphere nestled in a sea of gray, but he gazed upon it anyways and thought of when he left Maggie yesterday morning, and how she'd sparkled like a rainbow against that other dun-colored dawn. All those swirls of violet and blue and indigo dancing about her...it was such an intimate thing to see, almost like peeking into her mind.

_Be nice if'n Ah could shut it off, though,_ Jonah thought with a sigh, then looked down at his hands: a strong green edged with yellow, and a faint violet that faded as his thoughts turned away from Maggie. Green came up a lot in his aura, and sometimes he'd see red or blue as well, depending on what his mind was dwelling on, but the yellow had never left him since he'd been reborn in the desert. Not surprising, since he had a lot to be afraid of, first and foremost being the notion that he'd be stuck like this forever, alive on the outside but dead on the inside, thanks to the black ring lodged in his chest. Secondary to that was the nightmares that plagued him when he slept: memories of when he was _fully_ dead, with his soul trapped inside his stuffed and mounted corpse, unable to let anyone know of the torment he was in. The only thing that kept him from being consumed by fear was the thought that Green Lantern would be able to fix him. It had been a long time (from Jonah's point of view) since he'd last seen the hero, but he remembered Hal was a good man, plus he'd been involved in the nonsense that had resurrected Jonah in the first place, so who better to turn to for help?

Jonah's stomach growled, so he put an end to his ruminations and turned his mind towards breakfast. He dug through the duffle bag until he produced a cellophane-wrapped package of crackers slathered with peanut butter, courtesy of Maggie's pantry. He wasn't familiar with the sticky concoction, but he soon found it to be a far sight better than those "Pop-Tart" things Maggie had also tossed in the bag. Those tasted like an unholy marriage of hardtack and cake icing, much to Jonah's disgust, and were quickly abandoned by the side of the road last night. As he ate, he consulted the map so that he could get his bearings for the day. He'd spent a good portion of yesterday on foot, though Jonah had managed to hitch a brief ride with a man who'd dropped him off near someplace called Barstow. That was mid-afternoon, so Jonah had kept on walking on through sunset, doing his level best to avoid sleep for as long as possible. But eventually, exhaustion had forced him to stagger away from the moonlit road and collapse at his current location...which meant he now only had a vague idea of where he was. Placing his thumb over the dot representing Barstow, Jonah slid his index finger up and to the left as he guesstimated how far he'd travelled over the course of the night, finally coming to rest on an unmarked section of map. "Yep, just whut Ah reckoned...middle of nowhere," he said around a mouthful of crackers. "Nice tuh know folks ain't crowded up every last bit of the Earth yet."

Once the crackers were gone, Jonah took a few swigs of bottled water (the existence of which puzzled him to no end: he knew California was an arid state, but was it really necessary to sell folks water in bottles?), then packed up his gear and got back on the ankle express. He would have preferred a horse for such a long journey, but as the old saying went, beggars couldn't be choosers, so the best he could hope for was to hitch a ride should anyone happen to drive down the road. By the time the sun was good and clear of the horizon, however, Jonah could see that his luck was taking its usual bad turn: over a dozen vehicles had roared past, most going in the wrong direction, while the ones heading Jonah's way were oblivious to his outstretched thumb. "Gonna be one of them days," he muttered as yet another automobile left him in the dust.

The sun climbed higher, and Jonah trudged on, the brim of his hat pulled low over his eyes - his altered vision caused them to be sensitive to bright light, and daylight in particular made him feel like he was half-blind. Due to this, he almost walked straight into a sign posted alongside the road. Luckily, the shadow of it caught Jonah's attention before such an embarrassing situation could occur, and he paused to squint at it. The sign was made of a rectangular sheet of metal, the same as many of road signs he'd seen over the past couple of days, and like all the others, its message was short and succinct. In this case, it read:

**Welcome to**

**PARADISE CORNERS**

Jonah spent a good minute looking at the sign, his head tilted ever so slightly to the left. _Ah've seen this afore_, he thought. _Not exactly like this, but the words...the same words_. He ran a hand over the sign as he tried to dredge up the memory, but he kept coming up empty, and it disturbed him. It wasn't the fact that he'd forgotten something - that was perfectly natural, he'd forgotten things before - but he kept getting the sensation that a large chunk of his life had been ripped out of his mind, leaving behind only tattered bits that hinted at what used to be there. _Maybe thet's really the case_, he told himself. _Yuh spent over a hunnert years by yer lonesome, an' yer mind had pretty much cracked tuh pieces by the end of it. So maybe when yuh got put back together, some of them pieces got left out...but if'n thet's so, then whut else might be missin' up there? _The yellow in his aura flared up as he considered the possibility that, on top of everything else that was wrong with him, he now couldn't trust his own memory. "Just take it as it comes, Jonah boy," he said aloud, skirting around the sign and continuing down the road. "Ain't no sense in worryin' about something yuh cain't even remember, right?"

About a quarter-mile down the road, Jonah spotted a few houses, then the edge of what he assumed to be Paradise Corners proper. Compared to other modern towns he'd seen so far, this one was relatively small, but to his 19th Century eyes, it still had an air of prosperity with its many brick buildings and paved streets. Hoping perhaps he'd come across something that existed from his time and would help jog his fractured memory, Jonah walked all throughout the town, his eyes going from one building to the next. Sadly, though he saw many structures that appeared to have been standing for quite a long time, none of them looked like they would have existed in the 1800s. The closest he got was when he found an old cannon sitting on a pedestal in the middle of the town square - a war memorial, he realized upon closer inspection - but even that appeared to have only come into existence around the same time as something called World War I, whatever that was. During his self-guided tour, Jonah passed quite a few townsfolk who were also out and about that morning. Most of them seemed too focused on whatever business people in this century occupied themselves with to pay him any mind, but some were friendly enough to give Jonah a nod or smile when their paths happened to cross - after a hundred-odd years of being ignored, small gestures like that were like a balm for Jonah's wounded soul, and he soon found himself flashing a very genuine smile right back at them.

At the far end of town, Jonah passed by an old church with a tall wrought-iron fence running alongside it. There were a large number of people gathered behind the fence, whom Jonah figured were engaged in some kind of church social and therefore ignored them in favor of gazing upon the church itself. Unfortunately, like everything else he'd seen within Paradise Corners, it failed to make any sort of connection with him, and he was beginning to get frustrated over the matter. _Ah wish Ah could recollect something 'bout this place_, he thought, _even if it was just a little thing. Don't seem right thet Ah kin remember the name an' nothin' else. Must've been important tuh me somehow, way back when, or else why would the name have stuck in muh head fer so long?_

As he stood at the foot of the steps pondering this, he heard a voice call out to him, "Hey! We're all back here already!" Confused, Jonah turned to see a man waving to him from behind the fence. "You're a couple of hours late, but don't worry, there's still a lot to do," he said.

"Whut in the Sam Hill are yuh talkin' about?" Jonah replied as he walked towards the man, who was a bright shade of indigo to Jonah's eyes.

The man cocked an eyebrow. "You're not here for the cleanup?"

"Cleanup of whut?" Then Jonah looked past the man and into the area beyond the fence and realized it was a cemetery, or at least the remains of one: every grave within it had been torn open, every headstone tossed aside, and every coffin shattered to splinters. Despite this, no corpses could be seen, for they had all been reanimated by the black and sent out across the land three nights ago, dead soldiers in a war whose climax had rendered them all to dust...all except one long-forgotten cowboy named Jonah Hex. Respectfully, he removed his hat and watched as some of the townsfolk did their level best to bring some order to that chaos. Men and women alike repositioned headstones or took up shovels to fill in graves, and he even saw children helping to pick up debris. Throughout it all, each one of them gave off the same indigo aura as the man Jonah was speaking to, just wave after wave of compassion spilling over the scarred soil. _There ain't even no bodies left tuh put in them graves, but they still care enough tuh make it look proper again_, Jonah thought.

"It's overwhelming, isn't it?" the man said, as if he'd read Jonah's mind. "You look at it and think, 'There's no way this can ever be made right again.' But it _can_ be made right, it just takes time." He gestured towards another part of town, saying, "We took care most of the plots over in Sacred Heart Cemetery yesterday, and there's still a few people putting the finishing touches over there right now, laying sod and things like that. This one's a lot smaller, though, so we should be done before sundown."

"Yo're good people fer doin' this," Jonah said quietly. "The folks thet was buried here...Ah know they'd thank yuh if'n they could."

"Seemed the best thing to do. It wouldn't be right to forget about them just because they're not here anymore." The man started to turn away from the fence. "I should get back to work. You have a good day, sir, and God bless."

Jonah stood by the fence for a few minutes and watched the volunteers work at their grim task, then he made his way down the length of it until he reached the gate. Settling his hat back upon his head, he walked into the cemetery and over to a middle-aged woman shoveling dirt, her face red from exertion. Without a word, Jonah gently took the shovel from her and assumed her place beside the open grave. No one asked who he was, and he didn't offer to tell them, he just became another volunteer amongst many.

What followed was a long, hot day filled with back-breaking labor, but Jonah didn't utter one word of complaint about it. To him, helping out in this task was the least he could do after the damage he'd caused when the black had a hold of him. It wasn't exactly guilt that he felt, more like anger at letting himself be used to harm innocent people. In his old life, he'd killed hundreds of men, but he felt that each one of them deserved what they got. Nekron, however, targeted every living soul, and in doing so made Jonah spill the blood of those who had never hurt anyone. _Maybe thet's the reason Ah came back when nobody else did_, he thought as he filled yet another empty grave. _Maybe Ah got chose tuh serve penance fer all those innocents thet us dead folks killed, an' now the Lord's gonna do tuh me like He done tuh Job back in Bible times. Reckon thet ain't even remotely fair, considerin' the misfortunes Ah've already suffered, but then again, the Lord's always seen fit tuh make me a right fine scapegoat._

Around midday, another group of volunteers began to pass out sandwiches they'd made, along with some bottled drinks, and everyone took a well-deserved break. Despite the general air of acceptance he'd received from these people so far, Jonah still felt like the odd man out, so he retreated with his lunch to a relatively-isolated portion of the cemetery that had already been fixed up. In that area, he found a large amount of headstones that had been nearly worn smooth by the elements. _Must be from when Paradise Corners was new_, he thought, which led to an idea. He began to walk slowly up and down the rows, eating his sandwich as he read each of the old markers as best he could. Most of the names meant nothing to him, or were too generic to dredge up a memory - he found at least five that bore the surname "Smith" - then he came across one that jumped right out at him. _Thornton...thet kind of rings a bell._ He got down on his haunches, polishing off the last bit of sandwich while he looked at the stone. Between the weathering and his sunblind eyes, though, it was almost impossible to read the rest of the inscription. So he scooped up a handful of fresh earth and rubbed it over the front of the stone, until the earth had worked its way into the faint impressions that remained upon it. "Christina Thornton," Jonah read aloud. "Born...it's eighteen-something, or it used tuh be. Died 1879. Love...no, beloved. Beloved Mother." The last word struck a chord within him, bringing forth an image in his mind: a woman being held at gunpoint by some rough-looking man, while a little boy begged for someone to help his ma. _Not someone...me. The boy was beggin' me to save her. Did Ah save her? Or did Ah fail, an' thet's why she was buried here?_

He couldn't remember. Just like with the name of the town, he could feel this gaping hole in his mind where the knowledge used to be. _Ain't nobody Ah kin ask 'bout it, neither. Everybody from back then is dead an' gone...'cept fer me. But thet's the way it's always been, ain't it? Everyone dies, an 'Ah keep right on livin', even when Ah don't deserve tuh do so._ Jonah got to his feet and started to walk towards the cemetery gates. Part of him still wanted to stay and help these townsfolk with repairing all the damage, but a bigger part of him felt sick in the heart and belly, and that was the part that won out. A few people that he passed noticed his look of distress and asked if he was okay, but he ignored them. How in blazes could he begin to explain what was really wrong with him? Better to stay silent and take care of the problem the way he always had in the past.

There was a liquor store about three blocks away from the cemetery, and though Maggie hadn't given Jonah a lot of money, there was enough for him to buy the cheapest bottle of rotgut the store had. Jonah hadn't touched one drop of liquor since his resurrection, and when he took his first swallow as he exited the store, it burned down his throat like liquid fire. He gagged a little, but it didn't stop him from taking another swig as he walked over to the town square. There were benches all along the perimeter, and Jonah rested his weary bones down upon one so that he could fully enjoy his purchase. _Best thing tuh come outta muh resurrection is thet Ah don't have tuh worry 'bout any booze spillin' through a hole in muh face no more,_ he thought.

Jonah took his time with the bottle, making it last for well over an hour. In between swallows, he noticed that some of the folks passing by gave him sour looks, so he started to give them right back, even going to far as to holler at one elderly lady walking past him, "Y'all got a problem with a fella tryin' tuh relax?" That got her moving in a hurry.

By the time he'd nearly reached the bottom of the bottle, a shadow fell over him from behind the bench, and a voice said, "Good afternoon, sir. Would you mind standing up, please?"

Jonah turned his head to see a policeman making his way around to the front of the bench. Giving him a bleary-eyed smile, Jonah got up, saying, "There a problem, officer?"

"I've gotten a few calls about someone harassing people in this area. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

"Not a bit. Ah've been a-sittin' here fer a good long while now, an' Ah ain't seen one lick of trouble."

"Is that so?" The policeman looked him over, then said, "I don't recall seeing you in town before. You new around here?"

Jonah chuckled, "Ah'm new everywhere these days."

"Then that means you don't know about the local law about public drunkenness."

"Drunk? Hell, Ah ain't drunk." Actually, Jonah was feeling rather tipsy, which was odd to him: it usually took a lot more than just one small bottle of liquor to get him this soused. The idea that the same force that had erased all his scars might have also erased his high tolerance for alcohol never occurred to him.

"Are you willing to take a Breathalyzer test to prove it?"

"Come again?" he replied, and thought to himself, _Hell, maybe Ah am drunk if'n Ah cain't understand English_. As he puzzled over the words, Jonah caught sight of the policeman's name plate, pinned on his uniform next to his badge. "Thornton...yer name's Thornton?" he asked incredulously. "Damnation, if'n thet ain't one Hell of a coincidence..."

"Sir, I'm going to ask you to follow me to my car." As the policeman talked, he reached for Jonah's duffle bag sitting on the bench. Jonah saw this and immediately made grab for it himself, yanking it out of the Officer Thornton's hand. Unfortunately for Jonah, the policeman managed to catch the bag's strap, and the force of the two men pulling in opposite directions caused it to rip open along one of the seams. The blanket inside spilled halfway out like a flannel tongue, while the map, his Dragoons, and a few provisions fell onto the sidewalk.

"Dammit, boy, why'd yuh have tuh go an' do thet?" Jonah said as he knelt down to pick up his belongings, starting with the Dragoons. "Ah ain't got much left in this world, an' Ah surely don't appreciate y'all..."

A sound reached Jonah's ears, one that he hadn't heard in over a century, but he knew intimately: the sound of a hand slapping leather and drawing cold iron. His hand hovering inches above his ancient revolvers, Jonah glanced up to see Thornton pointing a gun of his own directly at the former bounty hunter. "Sir, step away from the weapons and put your hands on top of your head!" the policeman ordered, his aura a frantic swirl of green, red, and yellow.

_Well now, this day just keeps on gettin' better an' better,_ Jonah thought.

_**NEXT ISSUE: You knew it was coming..."Trouble in Paradise"!**_


	4. Trouble in Paradise

**TROUBLE IN PARADISE**

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. If you are not a United States citizen, you may contact your country's consulate prior to any questioning. Do you understand each of these rights I have explained to you?"

"Roundabout," Jonah Hex grunted. He was laying on his stomach as Officer Thornton handcuffed Jonah's wrists behind his back. Normally, he wouldn't have given up without a struggle, but considering that he might get shot if he _did_ struggle, and that might cause him to revert back to being a corpse like the _last _time he got shot...well, that would lead to a whole 'nother set of problems. So he swallowed his pride and decided to do whatever the officer told him until he could think of a good way out of this. Worst part of it was, with all the adrenaline pumping through his system, Jonah had sobered up right quick.

"Do you understand your rights?" the officer repeated. "Yes or no?"

"Yessir."

"Having these rights in mind, do you wish to talk now?"

"Yeah, Ah do." Jonah twisted his head as best he could so as to look at the policeman. "Don't yuh think yo're goin' a mite overboard here? Ah ain't done nobody a lick of harm."

"Do you have a concealed weapons permit?"

"Ah don't even know whut thet_ is_."

"Then no, I'm not going overboard."

Jonah considered saying more, then decided to follow that whole advice about remaining silent. Still, this was damned ridiculous: Jonah had reckoned that carrying his guns out in the open might invite trouble, so he'd kept them hidden ever since his resurrection, but the idea that it was illegal to even possess them never crossed his mind. _No, it cain't be illegal_, Jonah thought. _This fella said something about a permit. Either way, it's the stupidest law Ah've ever heard of_. He was beginning to wish he'd resisted the urge to give Paradise Corners a closer look. Perhaps there was a good reason why his mind had blanked out nearly all memory of this place, and he should have steered clear of it the minute he saw the sign alongside the road. _A bit late tuh be havin' second thoughts now, Jonah boy_, he told himself as Officer Thornton pulled him to his feet. A few people had gathered a discreet distance away, and while the notion of gawkers was nothing new to Jonah, he was puzzled over the small metallic rectangles he saw some of the people holding out at arm's length like talismans. He also heard one of them say something about a "U-tube", which was just a foreign a word to him as "Breathalyzer". _A hunnert years passes, an' nobody kin speak proper English no more_.

The officer's vehicle was parked just a short walk from where he'd arrested Jonah. He opened the rear door and put a hand on top of Jonah's hat as he nudged him inside, saying, "Watch your head." Once his prisoner was stowed away, Thornton got in the front, setting Jonah's duffle bag on the empty seat beside him. Then he picked up a small black box tethered to the dashboard - Jonah recalled seeing one like it inside Maggie's truck. "You there, Dave?" Thornton said into the device.

"_Right here, John_," a voice replied. "_You find that D-and-D?_"

"Sure thing...and we might be adding a concealed weapons charge to his bill, as well."

"_What do you mean, 'might'?_"

"He's got a pair of revolvers, but to be honest, they look so old, I don't know if they're functional." Thornton plucked one of Jonah's Dragoons out of the bag and held it near his nose. "I can smell gunpowder on them, though, so they're not props."

"_We'll hammer it out once you bring him back to the station," _Dave said._ "Want me to run the I.D. on your guy?_"

"No I.D. to run. No wallet, even, just a few bucks stuffed in his pocket."

"Okay_, we'll do it manually, then. He at least give you a name?_"

"Hold on." Thornton turned to look at Jonah through the wire mesh separating them. "What's your name?"

"Jonah," he replied.

"Your _full_ name. And for the record, the 'remaining silent' part of the Miranda warning doesn't apply to us asking about who you are or other personal data."

The bounty hunter hesitated. While his memories regarding Paradise Corners were few and far between, one of them involved a woman named Christina Thornton...and since this policeman had the same last name, it was a good chance they were related. Until Jonah remembered exactly what he'd done in this town way back in the 19th Century, it seemed wise to not tell Christina Thornton's 21st Century descendant who he really was. Recalling what he'd seen on many of the old tombstones in the cemetery, he finally said, "Jonah Smith."

"Home address?" Thornton asked, and Jonah replied that he didn't have a home. "Date of birth?" he continued.

"November 1st, eighteen...er, Ah mean, _nine_teen..." Jonah flushed as he tried to think of a modern date that would match up to his youthful looks, then mumbled, "Ah don't remember."

There was brief look of doubt in the policeman's eye, but he turned back around and repeated the information into the radio, followed by, "About five-foot-eleven, medium build, reddish-blond hair, blue eyes, no visible scars or tattoos."

_Not anymore, at least_, Jonah thought as he settled back in the seat. He imagined this Dave fella flipping through a mug book like the Pinkertons used, searching for any criminals that might match Jonah's description. _Lord knows whut Ah'll do if'n there is one._

Once he was done on the radio, Thornton set the vehicle in motion, giving the police siren a quick _blat_ to let the other drivers know he was pulling into the late-afternoon traffic. There was no urgency to get Jonah to the station, as it was merely a drunk-and-disorderly charge at the moment, and Jonah hadn't been putting up too much of a struggle. As they made their way down the road, Thornton threw a glance up at the rearview mirror to look at Jonah. To his surprise, Jonah was looking right back at him, his eyes focused on the mirror with an intensity that made Thornton want to drive a little faster.

About five minutes after they left the town square, the radio squawked to life: _"John, what's your twenty?"_

"I'm on Beaconsfield, south of Main. Why, what's up?"

"_The alarm just got tripped over at the Stop N' Go. I need you over there now."_

"Then call one of the other guys. I've got a guy in my backseat already, remember?"

"_Everybody else is tied up all over town. You're the closest."_

"Dammit," Thornton whispered, then said into the radio, "I'm on it." He flipped some switches on the dashboard, and the lights and siren sprang to life as he whipped the vehicle around - the other automobiles on the road parted before him like water. A few minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of a small convenience store. "This is a slightly unusual situation," Thornton said to Jonah as the officer readied to leave the vehicle, "but if you can sit still and not cause trouble, I'll keep that in mind when I'm writing up your report. Understand?"

"Sure." Jonah did his best to look harmless while Thornton got out, slamming the car door behind him. As the policeman approached the entrance of the Stop N' Go, Jonah studied his posture, the way he held his pistol, the expression on his face. It was an instinctive action on Jonah's part, born from decades of gunfights where tiny observations like that could mean the difference between life and death. Overall, John Thornton looked like he knew what he was doing, and the deep-green aura he gave off as he strode into the store showed that he believed enough in himself to make good use of his abilities. It almost made Jonah feel guilty that he'd lied about sitting still, but he damn-well wasn't going to waste an opportunity to escape.

The moment Thornton passed out of sight, Jonah got to work. Though the officer had been smart enough to cuff Jonah's hands behind his back, that didn't mean he couldn't slip them around to the front again - it wasn't an easy trick, but it could be done. Laying across the seat, Jonah arched his back so that he could slide his buttocks thorough the loop made by his arms. It felt like his shoulders might separate from the maneuver, but he knew the pain wouldn't last long and ignored it. Once that was done, his cuffed wrists were now caught behind his knees. _Now comes the hard part_, he thought, then brought his legs up to his chest, so that his knees nearly brushed his ears, and hooked his bootheels onto the chain connecting the metal bracelets. With all the strength he could muster, he pushed his legs away from his chest while pulling his wrists towards himself in an effort to break the chain. This made the pain he'd felt earlier pale in comparison, as the cuffs cut into his wrists to the point where they drew blood_. Doesn't matter_, he told himself. _If'n thet cussed black ring inside of yuh kin repair a hole in yer head, then a few scrapes on yer wrists should be a cakewalk._ So he pushed harder, until the cuffs suddenly popped off of his blood-slick hands, shredding skin and snapping bone in the process. He cradled his ruined hands to his chest, cursing a blue streak as he waited for the ring to perform its little trick. Sure enough, his hands began to revert to a desiccated state, taking the pain with it. _Thet's better. Still a mite unsettlin' tuh see, but better. Now, let's try an'..._

A gunshot rang out, and Jonah froze, looking out the police car's windshield. He thought perhaps Thornton had come out, seen what Hex was doing, and fired a warning shot, but no one was there. Then he heard muffled screams coming from the direction of the Stop N' Go. Unfortunately, there were no windows on the building, nor was he at a good angle to see through the glass door, so he couldn't tell what was going on. How long had Thornton been in there, anyways? A minute, perhaps two? A lot could happen in two minutes, especially if guns were involved. _Ain't none of yer business, Jonah boy_, he told himself. _Just get the Hell outta here afore Thornton really does see yuh._ The thought had no sooner formed in his mind when he spied a figure coming out of the convenience store. It was a young man, cloaked in a fluctuating shades of yellow and orange. In one hand he clutched a large paper bag, and in the other was a pistol. Jonah expected Thornton to emerge next, but he didn't. The young man staggered over to a rusty automobile parked nearby and fumbled with the handle, eating up seconds of getaway time, yet Thornton still didn't come out of the building. Jonah watched all this in silence, while in his mind he began to hear the voice of a little boy, just like he'd heard in the cemetery...a little boy begging Jonah Hex for help.

A snarl came to his lips, and for a brief moment, he resembled the Jonah Hex of old, a man as well-known for his scarred visage as for his deadly gunslinging. Making a fist, he punched through the side window, not even feeling the shards of glass that cut into his corpselike hand, then climbed out of the police car. Meanwhile, the thief struggled to get inside his own vehicle, not realizing yet that he'd accidentally locked the door. This mistake gave Jonah enough time to break into the front of the police car and retrieve his belongings, including his Dragoons. He held one of them at the ready as he strode over to the thief, who'd regained enough of his composure to unlock the car and was now trying to start it. Taking careful aim, Jonah sent a bullet through the automobile's back window, then shouted, "Get out of thet tin can afore Ah put one through yer thick skull!"

There was a slight hesitation, then the thief opened the car door and threw himself face-first on the ground, his hands behind his head. "Jesus...I'm sorry, I didn't...I just needed...oh Jesus God, I've never..."

"Shut up!" Jonah bent over and shoved the barrel of his Dragoon against the thief's temple, an action which made the thief wet his pants. "If'n thet policeman yuh just shot was here, Ah'm sure he'd rattle off thet list of rights an' such...but he _ain't _here, an' Ah don't give a damn 'bout whut rights a skunk like yerself has. Yuh hear me, boy?"

"Oh God, don't kill me..."

"Why shouldn't Ah? Give me one good reason." Jonah cocked back the hammer on his Dragoon. "Come on, first one that pops into thet empty head of yers."

"Baby...baby..."

Jonah thought at first that the thief was still begging, albeit in a strange manner, then he saw a ripple of indigo and violet beneath the man's yellow aura. Not moving the Dragoon away, Jonah reached into the vehicle with his free hand and grabbed the paper bag. Inside, he found various small jars, all with pictures of infants on them. He plucked one out of the bag and read the label: _Gerber Strained Peas_. "Yuh stole all this tuh feed a baby?" he asked. The thief nodded vigorously, and Jonah pulled the gun away from his head, saying, "Yo're lucky Ah ain't fond of makin' orphans."

"Th-thank you...thank..."

"Yuh ain't out of the woods yet, so hush." Jonah turned his head and saw a knot of people standing out by the sidewalk - like the gawkers at the town square, a bunch of them were holding up those rectangular things. He considered going over there and grabbing one just so he could figure out what the Hell it was, but he resisted the urge and instead pointed at a burly man in a leather coat, saying to him, "Y'all come on over here an' keep an eye on this fella." It took a second for the man to respond, but once he did, Jonah headed over to the entrance of the convenience store, tucking his gun under his belt out of habit.

The smell of blood and gunpowder hit him the instant he pushed the door open. Thornton was sprawled on the floor near the cash register, with a young woman that Jonah assumed was the clerk kneeling next to him, her hands pressed to the upper right side of Thornton's chest. The woman looked up as Jonah approached, saying to him, "It won't stop. I thought if you put pressure on the wound, the blood's supposed to stop."

Jonah didn't answer. It was obvious from the location of the wound and the wet sound that accompanied Thornton's ragged breathing that bullet had pierced his lung. "Is there a doctor in town?" he asked.

"I called 911, but you know how long they always take."

Actually, Jonah didn't know in the least, so he dismissed the statement and focused on helping Thornton. A pool of blood was forming beneath the officer, who had mercifully passed out from shock. If Jonah couldn't find a way to stop the bleeding, though, Thornton might not ever wake up again. His eyes flicked up to the wall behind the cash register, where row after row of cigarettes were on display. Spotting what he wanted, Jonah stepped behind the counter and grabbed a clear bag of pipe tobacco. "What are you doing?" the woman asked.

"An old trick," Jonah said as he returned to Thornton's side. "Yuh pack this against the wound, so's the blood kin clot up in it. Ain't perfect, but it should keep things under control 'til the doctor gets here." He reached over to move the woman's hands so he could get to work, which caused her to shriek when she noticed the state his own hands were in. "Ah've looked worse," he informed her, then ripped open the bag and pressed a clump of tobacco into the chest wound. "Gonna have tuh do the backside too. Help me roll 'im over...easy, now." The woman did as Jonah ordered, though she let out a moan at the sight of the mess beneath Thornton. "Don't yuh start wailin', girl," Jonah snapped, "or so help me, Ah'll give yuh a _reason_ tuh wail." But even after the clerk managed to get herself under control, Jonah could still hear that little boy's voice from so long ago echoing in his head: _You gotta help, mister...you just gotta...please._ "Ah'm doin' whut Ah kin, boy," Jonah said under his breath. "Don't know whut Ah did back then, but Ah'm doin' everything Ah kin right now."

As Jonah finished applying his frontier dressing, he heard a high, keening wail cut through the air. He looked over at the glass door and saw a boxy white vehicle drive into the parking lot. A man and a woman immediately got out of the vehicle and, after pulling a stretcher and some other equipment out of the back, made a beeline into the convenience store. "How's he doing?" one of them asked as they came in.

"Fella's got a punctured lung, lost a good amount of blood." Jonah stepped out of the way so the medics could do their job, but not before asking them, "Y'all kin fix thet, right?"

"We can get it started, but the docs over at Mercy Hospital will finish it." The medic raised an eyebrow upon seeing the tobacco. "What the heck did you do?"

"Same as always: the best Ah could with whut Ah had." Jonah heard another wail outside, which he recognized as the same made by Thornton's police car, and decided now would be a good time to depart. There was a chance that his arrest might be forgotten about in the midst of all this commotion, but he thought it best to not push his luck. Taking advantage of the growing amount of people outside the convenience store, Jonah slipped away before the arriving officers could take notice of him. He didn't run once he was clear of the crowd, he just kept walking, doing his best not to draw attention to himself. About twelve blocks away from the store, Jonah passed a boarded-up building, which he decided would be a good place to hide out until nightfall. As he jimmied open the building's back door, part of Jonah's mind kept hollering that he should quit screwing around and get the Hell out of this town, but another part kept dwelling on the way all the color had been slowly leaching out of Thornton's still form as the black crept in. He couldn't leave yet, not with that image burned into his brain.

Jonah hunkered down on the dusty floor inside the abandoned building and looked at his hands: they were fully healed now, as if he'd suffered no injuries at all, just like when he'd been shot in the head a couple of days before. Meanwhile, Thornton catches one measly bullet and ends up hovering somewhere between life and death. It didn't seem fair in the least. "Ah don't rightly know why Yuh brought me back, Lord," Jonah said, still staring down at his unmarred hands. "Maybe it is fer some sort of penance, maybe not. If'n it is...well, Ah don't think lettin' this poor fella die should be a part of it. Ah may not remember whut exactly Ah did in this here town way back when, but Ah reckon Ah might've harmed his family enough already." He sighed heavily and shook his head. "Ah ain't askin' fer much here, Lord, just thet Thornton makes it through this in one piece an' Yuh let me know it. After thet, Y'all kin put me through the wringer any way Yuh see fit. How does thet sound?"

The only answer was silence, and Jonah sighed again as he leaned back against a wall and waited for night to come.

* * *

John Thornton was exhausted. The trauma of being shot, coupled with the hours spent on an operating table as doctors sewed him back together, had left him feeling drained. Still, he'd managed to put on a good front when his wife and kids saw him in the recovery room. They'd only been allowed to visit for a short while, but it was enough to assuage their fears that he might not make it. To be sure, he'd be spending the next few days in a hospital bed, and it'd be weeks or even months before he'd be able to go back to work, but the important thing was that he was alive. He kept reminding his wife of that fact as she looked at him with red-rimmed eyes. Sore as Hell, yes, and a little short of breath, but alive. It was a good thing to be, a great thing, and he had some drunk stranger to thank for it.

As he lay in the dim room with only the hum of the respirator for company, Thornton's mind puzzled over the odd events from earlier that day. After he'd regained consciousness, Dave and George had filled him in on what he'd missed: apparently, the guy Thornton picked up on a drunk-and-disorderly had broken out of the police car to stop the perp that shot Thornton (over seventeen dollars' worth of baby food, no less), then took the time to perform some MacGyver-esque first aid on Thornton before vanishing into thin air. It didn't make any sense, but multiple witnesses, including the EMTs, all told the cops the same story. But why did the guy do it? Anybody else would've hightailed it the moment they broke free, but he stayed to help. Maybe it was just to prove that he wasn't deserving of arrest. It didn't matter anyways, the guy was long gone. He should just be thankful for the little miracle and leave it at that. Still...

"How yuh feelin', son?"

Thornton lifted his head to see that the door to his room was open a crack, letting in just enough light for him to make out the outline of a man in a wide-brimmed hat. "You...what're you..." Thornton gasped, his heart beating so fast that it made his chest hurt even more.

"Don't fret, Ah ain't here tuh cause a ruckus," the man who'd identified himself earlier as Jonah Smith said. "Ah just wanted tuh make sure y'all were okay."

"Aside from the hole in my lung, I'm pretty alright." Thornton's voice was muffled by the oxygen mask over his face. "You took a chance coming up here, you know. You're still under arrest."

"Ah know, thet's why Ah've been dodgin' every policeman Ah've seen on muh way up here." He cocked an eyebrow. "Yuh gonna tell on me?"

Thornton took a few breaths, then said, "No...no, I don't think I will. Just so long as you tell me why you saved me."

"Because Ah think Ah might've done yer family wrong, a long time ago." Jonah stepped over to Thornton's bedside. "Yuh may not believe this, but Ah ain't as young as Ah look."

"What do you mean?"

"Ah've been tuh Paradise Corners afore. 'Bout maybe a hunnert and thirty years back, Ah think. Don't recall much of whut happened durin' thet last visit, though. Just a name - Christina Thornton - an' a little boy askin' me tuh save his ma. The rest is a big blank." A look of distress crossed Jonah's face. "Ah've seen a tombstone out in the cemetery with her name on it, an' Ah've got this godawful feelin' thet Ah'm responsible fer puttin' her there."

Thornton stared at the man for a good long while, thinking about the ancient guns in Jonah's bag as well as his odd behavior. "Your name isn't really Smith, is it?"

"No, sir. It's Hex...Jonah Hex. Ah was bounty hunter back then."

"Good Lord." The officer laid back and stared at the ceiling. "I always thought that story was bull."

"Come again?"

"My grandpa used to tell a story about a guy that helped out our family back when we first moved out to California. My great-great-grandma, she'd been widowed early, and owed money on the farm. Then one day, some outlaw on the run broke into the house and took her hostage. She was saved by this bounty hunter who'd been tracking down the outlaw." Thornton let out a string of coughs, groaned, then continued to speak. "The bounty hunter...I don't know why...he used the reward money to pay off the debt on the farm. No real reason, he just...he just did it and left." He looked over at Jonah. "Are you telling me that you're the same guy?"

"Ah think Ah might be." A wave of relief washed over Jonah. Thornton's story matched up with what little he could recall, and that altruistic gesture was certainly something he'd done from time to time in the past. It was his odd way of keeping the world in balance: random acts of kindness to offset all the blood he spilled on a near-daily basis. As he mulled it over, a new memory began to surface. His brow furrowed, Jonah said, "Ah'm not sure, but...Ah think we might've crossed paths a few years later. Ah'd gotten into trouble with the law, an' she...she gave me a place tuh hide. She said it made us even. Ah didn't make the connection 'til just now." He rubbed a hand against his forehead. "Here Ah was, thinkin' all day thet Ah'd gotten her killed, an' Ah didn't even remember thet she'd helped me out later on."

"So I guess since you saved my life today, my family owes you a favor again."

"Yuh just repaid it. All Ah've really got left of muh old life is memories, an' havin' a great big hole in 'em like thet is a mite disconcertin'...so thank yuh, son." Jonah turned to leave, then glanced back over his shoulder. "By the by, y'all still got thet farm?"

"It's just a house and about five acres of land now, but yeah. My parents still live out there, and with luck, my boys will inherit it one day."

Jonah nodded. "Land's a good thing tuh hold onto. Means yuh'll always have a place tuh call home." He slipped out the door, saying, "Y'all be careful out there, Thornton. Ah ain't always gonna be there tuh save yer hide."

As the door closed, the room became dim again, and eventually Thornton drifted off to sleep. In the morning, and for months afterward, Thornton would wonder if the conversation with Hex really took place, or if it was the byproduct of too many painkillers.

* * *

It was dark as pitch in the cemetery, but Jonah could see everything clearly. He found some wildflowers growing alongside the fence, and he paused to pick them before heading to the back of the cemetery, where Christina Thornton's grave was located. Once there, he removed his hat, knelt down in front of the headstone, and lay the wildflowers beside it. He knew the grave was empty, just like all the others in the cemetery, but after his own experience of being a restless soul unable to move on, he thought that the same might be true for others. There was a possibility that, in such a hallowed place for the dead, scores of ghosts could be surrounding him at that very moment, and perhaps Christina Thornton was among their number. With that in mind, Jonah chose his words with great care:

"Ah just wanted tuh stop by an' thank yuh fer rememberin' me, Mrs. Thornton. It gives me a good feelin' tuh know thet Ah actually made a dif'rence in somebody's life. All's Ah kin seem tuh recall with any clarity these days are the bad things Ah went through...all the times when Ah was hurt or when Ah hurt others. It don't make fer a very rosy picture, an' it...it pains me sometimes. So knowin' thet Ah helped out someone, an' thet it was appreciated fer so long afterward...thet takes a bit of the pain away. Ah wish Ah could remember more about yuh. Ah _do_ remember yuh tellin' me about yer boy, though. Yuh said he was growin' up tuh be a fine young man, an' Ah do believe thet yer great-great-grandson has turned out the same. Ah hope yuh kin see him, wherever yuh are, an' thet yo're proud of him, 'cause John's a right proper lawman. Ah'm glad tuh have met him, even if he _did_ arrest me fer carryin' a gun. He'll do good by yer name, ma'am, Ah kin guarantee it. Thet's...thet's all Ah wanted tuh say."

Jonah stood up, put his hat back on, and made his way to the cemetery gates. In his mind's eye, he could see Christina Thornton as she was all those years ago: a slim woman with a smattering of freckles across her cheekbones and a fire in her eyes. An echo of those features still survived in John, now that Hex thought of it, and even just a little bit of her voice (or at least the rhythm of it). It was that voice that came back to him now, calling to him from a time long dead, extolling the same advice that she'd given him nearly a century-and-a-half ago: _For his sake...for all our sakes...the best thing you can do is ride outta here and don't never come back._

"Ah'll try tuh remember thet this time around," Jonah replied under his breath.

_**NEXT ISSUE: Jonah jumps "Out of the Frying Pan" and into you-know-what!**_


	5. Out of the Frying Pan

**OUT OF THE FRYING PAN...**

"So, how was everything today?"

"Perfect." Jonah smiled at the waitress standing behind the lunch counter. "Best chili Ah've had in a hunnert years."

"Wow! That's quite a compliment. Did you save any room for dessert?"

"Gonna have tuh pass, darlin'," he replied, though in truth he'd been gazing longingly at the display of pies at the end of the counter most of the time he'd been sitting there. Sadly, he knew that he barely had enough money to pay for lunch, so gazing was all he could afford to do.

"Well, if you change your mind, just flag me down." She set Jonah's bill next to his nearly-empty bowl of chili. "Have a great day, sir."

_If'n Ah reach muh destination today, Ah certainly will._ Five days had passed since Jonah's resurrection, and if he understood the map correctly, he was finally near the borders of Coast City. There was still a little bit of traveling left to do, but even if he didn't manage to hitch a ride, he was sure he'd be there by sundown. Once there, he could track down Green Lantern, and then it would only be a matter of time until that cussed black ring was yanked out of Jonah so he could get on with his new life in the 21st Century. What exactly he was going to do with that life, he wasn't sure, but he knew he didn't want to spend it with one foot still in the grave.

He polished off the last of his meal, then glanced at the bill and winced. $3.50 for the chili, ninety-five cents for the coffee...Good Lord, he'd seen cheaper fare in boomtowns! Jonah still couldn't believe how expensive things were these days. He recalled how his jaw had dropped when Maggie handed him a twenty-dollar bill as "pocket money", then proceeded to explain to Jonah about the horrors of inflation. Best he could figure was that a nickel now equaled a dollar, more or less, but that didn't make it any easier for him to stomach as he laid the proper amount on the counter. _Good thing Ah'm almost tuh Coast City, 'cause now Ah'm as broke as a dead-dick dog_, he thought, then got off the stool and grabbed the duffel bag sitting by his feet. _Wonder how folks these days kin even afford tuh make ends meet with prices like this?_

The hot, dry afternoon air smacked Jonah in the face as he left the restaurant. He was unaware of the technical aspects of air-conditioning, but he'd grown to appreciate it over the last five days, especially whenever he managed to hitch a ride with someone whose vehicle was equipped with it. The young couple who'd dropped him off in this town a few hours ago had the air in their automobile set so cold, Jonah wouldn't have been surprised if he'd seen snow blowing out of the vents, yet the girl grumbled about being hot. To her, such a luxury still wasn't good enough. It just boggled Jonah's mind how someone could be so ungrateful for push-button, instant coldness on a hot day. _Thet's because none of these folks have ever had it rough_, Jonah thought as he walked out of town and towards the hilly landscape that lay to the north. _This ain't like when yuh got stuck in thet other future. Those folks livin' there knew whut they'd lost, an' they became grateful right quick fer whatever they could scrounge up._

While Jonah's boots may have been treading the gravel alongside the road, his mind wandered a path much further away, all the way back to when he was a much younger man with an older face. For a brief period of his life, Jonah Hex had been trapped against his will in the year 2050, thanks to a time-manipulating despot named Reinhold Bornsten. During that period, he'd seen and experienced things that would haunt him all the way up to his death and beyond: irradiated wastelands pelted by flesh-melting rain, people and creatures that seemed to have been birthed out of nightmares, infernal machines and things indescribable. Every day Jonah spent there was a test of his very sanity, but what had almost irrevocably shattered it was the discovery of his own corpse on display in a dusty warehouse. It was only due to the unwavering support of two people that Jonah managed to pull himself back together. The first was Stiletta, a young woman who, like Maggie, befriended Jonah as he struggled to find his footing in this strange new place. After a while, they became more than friends, though like with Maggie, that affair was all too brief. Then there was Green Lantern, who at the time was just as lost as Jonah. Hal claimed to have met the bounty hunter before, though because of some fluke of time travel, the two events were occurring out of order, and their "first" meeting wouldn't happen until three years after Hal helped Jonah get back to his proper time. Once that was out of the way, Jonah spent the rest of his life trying to wipe every last remnant of that horrible period from his mind, and he'd nearly succeeded...until Lew Farnham showed up toting the same clownish outfit that Jonah had seen his corpse dressed in. Then Jonah died, and he spent the next century knowing he'd eventually end up in a dusty warehouse, staring down upon his younger, living self.

But that wouldn't happen now, would it? The Green Lantern had told him long ago that the future he'd seen was only one of many possibilities, and Hal seemed certain that the hellish world Jonah experienced would never come to be, at least not in the timeline he was a part of. That hadn't stopped Jonah from cursing Hal's name along with Farnham's after his corpse had been stuffed and mounted, but now that his formerly-dead flesh was young and vital again, it seemed Hal was correct all along. This timeline, the one Jonah existed in, wouldn't be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust within the next 40 years, and Jonah's body wouldn't be desecrated for all eternity. That knowledge alone was a relief, but even better was that his previous experience with the nightmare world of 2050 was actually proving useful as he navigated his way through this new world of 2010. Whereas his younger self had to cope with the existence of things that were just plain impossible in the 19th Century, his older and wiser self was already insulated against many of those shocks, or at least they were less earth-shattering. They still weren't exactly a pleasure to deal with, but as Jonah made his way across the great state of California, he'd developed a tendency to compare these two disparate worlds, if only to pass the time.

After an hour or so of walking, the town was long behind him, and Jonah noticed that the traffic was incredibly light on this stretch of road winding through the hills. The occasional vehicle would zoom past, but none of them seemed interested in giving him a ride. Knowing how close he was to Coast City even on foot, Jonah shrugged it off and kept walking. Then he realized that some of the cars that passed him on the northbound side were coming back on the southbound as well. It was hard to verify at first, since the black ring inside him had essentially rendered him colorblind, but after watching a big truck with "Mayflower" printed on its sides lumber up the road, then seeing an identical truck return from the same direction not long after, Jonah figured that it couldn't be a coincidence. About five miles after he made that observation, he saw the reason why: a long line of vehicles, all pointing north, but stopped dead on the road. _Damned peculiar_, Jonah thought as he watched one of the cars pull out of line and turn about in the middle of the road so they could drive south instead - those who stayed behind inched up into the clear spot the departing vehicle made. Still walking on the gravel shoulder, Jonah craned his neck in an effort to figure out what the fuss was about, but the sun dazzled his eyes too much for him to make anything out. _Cain't hurt tuh ask somebody_, he reasoned, then sidled over to one of the stopped cars, which had its front passenger-side window rolled halfway down. A man and a woman were sitting up front, and three rowdy boys were bouncing around in the back. "Pardon me," Jonah said, "but do y'all have any idea whut's goin' on up there?"

"How the Hell should we know?" then man snapped, his aura blood-red as his hands held the steering wheel in a death grip. "We're all the way back here!"

"Ed, the man was just asking a question," the woman said, her own aura a mild yellow.

"And it's a stupid question!"

"Mom! Mom!" one of the boys shouted. "Can we get outta the car like him?" He pointed at Jonah.

"Yeah, it's hot in here!" another chimed in.

"I gotta pee!" the youngest added.

"Will you kids _shut up_, for God's sake!" The man turned around and started smacking the boys with his open palm. "I can't take it anymore!" Then the man heard a metallic click, followed by his wife screaming, and he turned back to see that Jonah had stuck one of his Dragoons through the window and pointed it at the man's head.

"Ain't no reason tuh be hittin' them boys," Jonah said firmly. "Y'all obviously ain't goin' nowheres, so let 'em out so's they kin stretch their legs." Jonah then nodded towards the woman, whose screams had died down to a trembling sob. "An' be a little more civil tuh her while yo're at it."

The man gaped at Jonah for a few seconds before carefully reaching over and hitting a button on the driver's-side door. There was a loud _thunk_ as the locks disengaged, and the three boys threw the back doors open and scrambled out, the youngest one immediately running for some bushes alongside the road. "Don't go too far," Jonah told them as they whooped and ran all around the stopped vehicles. "This here's just a temporary furlough." Looking back inside the car, he said to their parents, "Give 'em five minutes, then round 'em up."

The adults nodded dumbly at Jonah, who put his gun away as he continued on down the road. If there was one thing the bounty hunter couldn't stand, it was folks that abused their kids.

The road made a sharp turn to the right around the base of a hill, and as Jonah rounded the corner, he finally saw what the holdup was: two police cars blocking the road north. One officer stood in the middle of the road and waved any southbound cars through, while two others walked down the line and spoke with the drivers of each of the northbound vehicles in turn. Jonah was too far away from all this to make out what was being said, but after his previous encounters with the law in this century, he thought it best to avoid these fellas. Glancing across the road, he saw that the land beyond the guardrail sloped down into a wooded area. _Time tuh blaze a new trail_, Jonah thought, and began to weave through the stopped cars, keeping his head low in the hopes that the police hadn't noticed him yet. When he reached the center line, he darted across the empty southbound lane and, after a quick glance over the side to see what he was getting himself into, jumped the guardrail. The slope was a bit steep, but Jonah just dug his bootheels into the loose scree and slid down into the cover of the woods. Once there, he paused and looked back up the slope, but he didn't see anyone peering over the guardrail or hear any voices yelling for him to halt. _Got away scot-free_, he thought with a grin, then headed deeper into the woods, still keeping on a northward course.

A brief consultation with the map told Jonah that there were no major roads nearby, save for the one he'd just deserted. That didn't trouble him much: north was north, whether you were on a road or in the woods, and he soon found traveling through the latter a pleasure. The dappled sunlight coming through the trees was less harsh on his eyes, and getting away from the steady drone of automobiles (not to mention the choking smell of them) was pure joy. Had it not been for the nylon duffle bag slung over his shoulder, he could have very easily believed that he was back in the 19th Century again, traveling through the wilderness. He could swear that he even smelled a waft of smoke on the wind, like from the chimney of some homestead nestled in the woods. No such place ever came into view, however, so he dismissed it as wishful thinking.

Hours and miles went by, with no sign of civilization to be found, and Jonah began to find himself missing it. Back in his old life, he couldn't have cared less about not seeing another living soul for days, as he was never the sociable type, but after being isolated for over a century, he suddenly realized that he _liked _having other people around him, even if he wasn't interacting directly with them all the time. Just knowing that he could approach someone and talk to them if he so wished, or that they could see and acknowledge him as another human being and not an inanimate object...it gave him a sense of dignity and belonging that he'd been denied for so long. Being alone now, even in such tranquil surroundings, made him feel somewhat incomplete. It was a strange feeling, and Jonah wasn't quite sure what to make of it, so he did what he always did whenever he felt an emotion that was currently inconvenient: he shoved it down into the deepest recesses of his gut and ignored it.

As the sun was just beginning to approach the horizon, Jonah came across a paved road cutting through the woods in an east-west direction. He glanced at the map to get his bearings, but this particular road didn't appear to be marked upon it. _Must be new_, he thought, walking out to stand in the center of the road. It was fairly narrow compared to most he'd been traveling on the last few days, and as far as he could discern from what few marks were on its surface, it hadn't been used much yet. _Reckon Ah could break it in a bit muhself._ Assuming that his bearings were correct, Coast City was roughly 10 miles west of his current position, so he started walking in that direction - if he was lucky, this road would take him all the way there. After a half-hour, though, it became evident that it wouldn't be that easy, as the road dead-ended in front of a place that reminded Jonah of a ghost town. It was a series of empty streets, all as new and untouched as the road he'd been walking on, and each one lined with scores of fancy two-story houses, many of which were only partially built. A large wooden sign was posted next the main road, declaring this place to be Vista Verde, "_The Perfect Place to Raise Your Family - Ask About Our Early Move-In Specials!_" There were more accolades on the sign, but Jonah couldn't read them because of the huge FORECLOSED banner pasted over it.

"How in blazes do yuh foreclose on a town?" he wondered aloud, but upon closer examination, he saw this wasn't a real town: it had no businesses or restaurants or churches or anything else that Jonah had seen in modern towns over the past five days, let alone what he'd expect to see in a town from his own time. "Y'all built a bunch of houses too close together in the middle of nowhere, an' yuh expected folks tuh just show up an' be happy with it? No wonder the bank foreclosed on yuh!" His harsh laughter echoed off the buildings, though in his mind, he was debating what his next move should be. It would be dark soon, and while he could see at night easily enough, it looked like his original estimate of reaching Coast City by sundown was way off, so he had to make a choice between pushing on through the dark, unknown woods or taking shelter in this joke of a town until daybreak. "Tuh Hell with it," he finally said. "Tonight, Ah'm the mayor of Vista Verde, population: one."

* * *

All those hours of walking had worked up his appetite again, so Jonah scavenged around one of the incomplete buildings until he'd found a good amount of electrical wire. He hadn't done a lick of hunting in over a hundred years, but he soon managed to fashion a snare and hang it above a well-worn rabbit trail he'd located in the woods. Knowing that it could be a while 'til suppertime, he decided to go exploring, and it wasn't long before he discovered that he wasn't the only one to ever hunker down in Vista Verde. Scattered all throughout the houses were bits of clothing, empty food packages, some abandoned periodicals, even a beat-up, dirty mattress, not to mention numerous spray cans laying beneath wall after wall of indecipherable graffiti. There was no sign that the owners of said items would be back any time soon, so Jonah laid claim to anything that looked useful, especially the mattress. Luckily, it was located in probably the most intact house on the entire lot, so there was no need to move it to a more secure location. Best of all, that house came with a wood fireplace, which appeared to have already been used, so Jonah got a fire burning before heading out again to check his snare.

The sun was nearly down by then, but his altered vision could pick out objects in the woods just as easily as if it were daylight, so he found the snare in no time, as well as the rabbit that had become entangled in it. "Sorry, fella," Jonah whispered as he unwrapped the wire from around the dead animal's neck, "but a man's gotta eat." He laid the carcass out on the ground belly-up so he could skin it...then paused and slapped the heel of his hand against his forehead. "Yuh cussed idiot, yuh ain't got no _knife_!" he growled. "All the damn things Maggie offered tuh pack in thet bag, an' yuh didn't think tuh ask if'n she had a spare knife! _Idiot!_" Hoping that he could find a suitable sharp object back at the house, he picked up the rabbit and began to stand, then fell back to his knees when he felt a sharp pain in his chest. He cried out as it quickly moved from his chest to his left shoulder, then down his arm. _Heart attack_, he thought. _Don't they say thet yer left arm hurts when yo're havin' a heart attack?_ But he wasn't old enough to be having a heart attack...or he _used_ to be, but he wasn't anymore. Before he could figure out the logistics of it all, the pain coalesced somewhere between his wrist and the palm of his hand. He dropped the rabbit and clutched at the area with his other hand - he could swear that he felt a strange bulge growing beneath the skin - then a cluster of slim black tendrils began to push their way out of his palm, weaving about each other until they formed a solid object that fell to the ground right next to the rabbit. The pain disappeared after that, but Jonah cradled his arm to his chest nonetheless as he stared at what had just been expelled from inside him.

It was a knife, about ten inches long including the handle, which was made from a carved piece of deer horn. Jonah knew this on first glance because it was identical to a knife that his father owned when Jonah was a boy. He remembered admiring it many times, but he'd never been allowed to touch it, and now, inexplicably, it was laying right in front of him. _No, thet ain't it_, he told himself. _Thet's just a copy, an imitation of whut y'all remember. It's made outta the same black stuff thet cussed ring spews out, the same stuff thet it keeps puttin' yuh back together with when yo're injured. It knew yuh needed a knife, so it spat one out the only way it could manage. The ring ain't just messin' with yer body, it's rootin' around in yer brain..._

That last thought was a bit too much for Jonah. His throat suddenly filled with bile, and he managed to scramble far enough away from the dead rabbit before he vomited. The remains of his lunch were soon laying in a puddle at the base of a tree, against which Jonah leaned heavily as he waited for the sick feeling to pass. "God, help me," he rasped, "Ah don't want this thing inside of me no more. It just ain't natural tuh be like this...it ain't _right_. Ah want tuh be _normal _again. Ah want tuh be _human_. Ah want..." His voice caught in his throat as he tried to get the words out. "Ah want tuh be at peace."

Oh, what a joke that notion was. Jonah Hex finding peace? How many times in the past had he thought he'd found it, only to have it ripped from his grasp? How many ruined lives? How many dead lovers? It wasn't something he was meant to have, yet a part of him kept hoping to achieve it. Even after he'd died, his anguished mind had clung to that feeble dream of peace for over one hundred long and lonely years. Perhaps that was why his soul had never moved on: he couldn't let go and accept that peace was impossible for a man bound for Hell.

He spat bitter-tasting saliva onto the ground, then wiped his mouth and chin with his shirtsleeve before going back over to where the rabbit lay. The knife was still there, and Jonah was hesitant to pick it up, but he eventually did. He tried not to notice how well-balanced it felt in his hand, or how sharp the blade was as it sliced through the rabbit's pelt, separating it from the meat. He refused to admit how convenient it was for the black ring to have produced it for him, even as he wiped the blade clean in the grass before tucking it inside his boot. Jonah Hex wasn't the sort of man to cast aside a useful weapon or tool, and that was what he forced himself to think of the thing as: only a tool, something he happened to luck into while scavenging, because thinking of how it had really come to exist made him want to throw up again.

By the time the rabbit was done cooking on the makeshift spit he'd set up in the fireplace, some of Jonah's appetite had returned. He ate in an almost mechanical fashion, chewing and swallowing the meat without really tasting it, and occasionally taking a swig from the container of water sitting next to him - during his earlier exploration, he'd found a working spigot, and used it to wash out and refill a few plastic bottles that he'd come across. All the while, he stared into the fire, his altered eyes perceiving it as nothing more than an undulating white light, and tried to ignore the possibility that he may never be able to see things normally again. As loath as he was to admit it, the incident with the knife had cast a pall over everything. It made Jonah even more desperate to find the Green Lantern, and he began to reconsider his decision to spend the night in Vista Verde. Once he'd had his fill of rabbit meat, Jonah stretched out on the mattress with the intention of resting for only a few hours, then striking out through the woods to the west again. Unfortunately, his full belly and exhausted body conspired against him, and Jonah quickly slipped into a deep sleep.

* * *

Even in his dreams, the world was monochrome, though instead of seeing nothing but gray, Jonah's environment took on the color of whatever emotion he happened to be feeling. As this particular dream unfolded in sleeping mind, he found himself walking through the empty streets of Vista Verde, which had become just as green as its name. Every possible shade was on display, from the deepest emerald to the palest sea-foam. The place was also a mishmash of both old and new - a livery next to a video-rental store, a run-down saloon where a band played modern rock music - the oddity of all this seemed lost on Jonah as he made his way to a kelly-green house standing alone on the corner. When he stepped through the door, he suddenly found himself in a lavish bedroom draped in silks, and the world came into violet bloom as he saw the woman reclining on the four-poster bed. "Maggie," he whispered, and she looked at him and held her arms out, inviting him into her embrace. She was clothed in a gauzy lavender gown, which Jonah tore at with such abandon that he saw a brief flare of orange, but soon all was violet again. Maggie's hair, her eyes, her smooth skin...everything about her was purple majesty, and Jonah drunk it in like sweet wine. "Ah love yuh, Maggie," he breathed into her ear, for in this place, he knew it was safe to admit. Out in the world, Jonah knew that loving someone could be death sentence, but not here, not while they were wrapped in soft violet light. But as he held Maggie tight, he noticed that her body began to feel thinner, her skin more coarse. Confused, Jonah pulled back, and everything became a lurid shade of yellow as Maggie shriveled up into a corpse before his eyes.

He screamed and tried to let go of her, but her jaundiced, clawed hands dug into his face, ripping open old scars, and Jonah could suddenly feel his body growing stiff and cold as other corpses appeared out of nowhere. They held him down and tore his clothes off, revealing an ugly rodeo-rider's outfit, bedecked with embroidery and fringe and rhinestones. He tried to scream again, but he couldn't make a sound as they dragged him over to a platform and nailed his feet to it, forcing him to stand in front of a crowd of dead faces that laughed and threw stale popcorn at him. A urine-colored light shone down upon an undead carnival barker that walked up to Jonah's side, and he saw that it was Lew Farnham, who turned to the crowd and said, "Take a good look, ladies and gentleman, at the greatest oddity of our times. Jonah Hex, the only dead man in the world that thinks he's still alive! He walks amongst the living, pretending to be just like them, but we all know better, don't we, folks?" They jeered at him, and Jonah struggled to move, to yell back at them, to do _anything_, but it was impossible. "Such a tragedy," Farnham continued. "Even now, he can't face up to the truth. He's nothing but a stubborn old mule that refuses to budge. What say we help him get to where he belongs?" With that, the crowd began to surge forward, grabbing hold of Jonah as he silently screamed inside his corpse. They pulled him down into a thick yellow fog that obscured his vision, but soon Jonah could smell smoke and feel the heat of the flames, and he knew he was in Hell, they'd finally dragged his stinking carcass down into Hell, and there would be no reprieve for him, no redemption, just endless punishment for all the deaths he'd caused in his old life. He tried to draw a breath so as to beg for mercy, but the air around him had turned rancid, and he clawed at his own throat in desperation...gasping...choking...

The pain of his fingernails digging into his flesh managed to wake Jonah up, and his eyes flew open to see that it wasn't all a dream: the room he was laying in was filled with smoke, not to mention an oppressive heat. His first thought was that the embers in the fireplace had spilled out onto the floor and started a blaze, but a quick glance showed that wasn't the case, as the smoke appeared to be pouring in through a nearby broken window. Pressing a corner of his blanket to his mouth in order to filter out some of the smoke, Jonah stumbled over to see that the world outside had become nothing but flames. _Dear God, Ah really am in Hell_, he thought, then regained enough of his senses to move back to the mattress and round up his gear. Whatever was happening, it didn't seem like a good idea to stay where he was. He took a moment to tear off a strip of blanket, soak it with water, then tie it over his mouth and nose before daring to leave the room he was in. Once he got near the foyer, he realized how bad his predicament was: the entire front of the house was on fire, with parts of the structure already beginning to collapse. _Ain't gettin' out this way_, he thought, and turned back the way he'd come to search for an alternate exit. The best he found was a window that didn't show him a view of flames, so he counted his blessings and busted through it.

Thoughts of being in Hell only increased as he saw what had become of Vista Verde. All the houses flanking the one Jonah had picked out were ablaze, with at least one already having fallen in upon itself, spewing more sparks into the ash-laden air, and the weedy lawns had become fields of fire. Beyond that, it was impossible to tell, for Jonah's light-sensitive eyes were overwhelmed by the glare of the flames. _Head fer the dark spots_, he told himself, then began to do just that, running down the street towards what he hoped was safety. It soon became evident that "safe" was a relative term: the fire had engulfed the entire area, apparently eating up the woods first before it started in on the houses, not to mention the fact that the streets themselves were beginning to turn into a tarry goo from all the heat. "Gotta get out...there's gotta be a way..." Jonah gasped as he stood in the middle of Vista Verde, one hand clutching the duffle bag and the other holding his hat onto his head. Then the answer came to him, and it wasn't a pleasant one. "Okay, yuh stupid ring," he said aloud, "if'n yuh really know whut Ah'm thinkin', then yuh know thet Ah sure as Hell don't want tuh trust muh life tuh y'all...but Ah ain't got any choice in the matter. So if'n y'all take good care of me an' get me through this here mess, then Ah'll put in a good word fer yuh once we go our separate ways. We got a deal?"

There was no indication that the ring heard Jonah's plea, much less understood it, but the bounty hunter rushed forward into the fire as if he'd received a confirmation anyhow. Aside from the flames, the path ahead of him was clear of obstacles, so all he had to do was keep an eye out for falling debris. It wasn't long before the fire was licking its way across his clothes, then slipping beneath to singe his skin. His throat already raw from inhaling all the smoke, Jonah bit down on the screams that wanted to erupt from his mouth, and when he felt parts of his body go numb as the ring began to perform its ministrations, he refused to acknowledge it. None of that was his concern, all he needed to worry about was running as far and as fast as he could until he finally escaped this blaze. But as he dashed through what was left of the woods, other forces seemed to conspire against him, and one of the charred trees nearby suddenly collapsed, starting a chain reaction that Jonah simply couldn't get clear of in time - one moment he was running, and the next he was pinned to the ground under flaming timbers.

Now he let the screams come, howling like mad as he tried to drag himself out from beneath this deathtrap, but his fingers only dug at the ground in futility. Then the flames caught his hair alight, quickly spreading across his face and boiling his brain inside his skull, yet still the ring scrambled to put him back together, new flesh burning away moments after restoration. Throughout it all, a single order echoed in Jonah's tortured mind, unheeded by the black ring:

_Stop...please...this hurts too damn much...just stop and let me die..._

* * *

_God, what a mess_, Harker thought as he took in the view framed by the visor of the protective helmet he wore. Even after eight years as smoke-jumper, he could still be awe-struck at the damage wrought by wildfires. And California had more than its fair share of them: a bad combination of too little precipitation, too much dry foliage, and a ton of careless humans, all in one very large state. The only good thing about it was that Harker and the other people on his team were never short of work. In fact, they'd been laboring for almost twenty-four hours in an effort to get this latest blaze under control. It appeared to have finally burned itself out, but they still took the precaution of walking through the affected areas in search of hot spots. Piles of ash were probed for live embers and fire-breaks maintained to make sure that the nightmare didn't start up again when they least expected it. At the moment, the team was inspecting a plot of land designated as "Vista Verde" on the map. It was supposed to have been a new housing development, but the investors went bust before it was completed, and Harker was glad of that. One of the problems they always faced when dealing with wildfires was making sure no civilians were caught in its path - it was easy to set up roadblocks and divert traffic away from an affected area, but getting people to voluntarily leave their homes was a whole other matter - so it was a stroke of luck that no one was living in Vista Verde when the fire swept through. The only victims here were row after row of empty buildings.

At least, that's what Harker believed until he heard one of the guys say over the radio, "I've got a body over here!" It was Vanzetti, who was further ahead in what was once thick woodland. Harker and some of the others made their way over there as fast as they could, their fire-retardant suits impeding their movement somewhat. When they got to Vanzetti's location, they found him trying to move a fallen tree trunk. "Almost didn't spot it," he told Harker and the others, static from the radio mike in his helmet making his voice crackle. "Poor bastard must've been fleeing the area and got pinned."

Another man grabbed the other end of the trunk, and together they heaved it aside, revealing a blackened skeleton laying on its belly. "We'll have to call in a chopper so they can properly move the body," Harker said over his own mike. "I'll stay on site until they arrive. The rest of you keep combing the area and hope this person was alone." The others departed, and Harker knelt down next to the body to examine it closer. Nearly all the flesh had burned away, not to mention the clothes, so there was no way to determine the sex at first glance. All of its teeth appeared to be intact, so at least there was the hope that dental records might be used to identify who the victim was. Then Harker spotted what looked like a luggage strap poking out from beneath the body. It was badly burned as well, but perhaps whatever it was attached to had been somewhat protected by the flames, and therefore might provide some clue as to the body's identity. Gently, he slipped a hand under the skeleton and lifted it so as to get a better look, only to get a shock as the skeleton suddenly laid a hand upon him!

Harker cried out and scrambled away from the body, which was struggling to push itself upright. With a trembling hand, Harker activated his radio, but he couldn't find his voice as he watched the skeleton get to its feet, the empty eye-sockets of its skull appearing to study him just as intently as Harker had been studying it moments ago. Then it picked up the charred bag that had been laying beneath it and hugged it tightly against its ribcage. Before it did so, Harker caught a glimpse of something even more bizarre just behind those ribs: a fist-sized lump of muscular tissue that was flexing slowly, very slowly. Harker soon realized it was a human heart...but what were those slim black tendrils branching out from it?

The thing's jaw began to move, and a rasping sound came out of its mouth, though there were no lungs to draw breath. "_S-s-s-suh...stuuuh...st-stay...away...from me..._" it finally managed to get out, then turned and began to stumble across the ashen landscape, towards a part of the woods that had withstood most of the fire.

When the chopper arrived, it found Harker sitting alone, having not moved an inch the entire time.

**TO BE CONTINUED!**


	6. Respite

**RESPITE**

He could taste smoke in his mouth. Smoke and dirt and some strange, metallic tang...blood. It was blood, but not his own. His desiccated tongue probed the spaces between his rotted teeth, relishing the taste as his hands dug a path through the rubble that smothered him. Just beyond the corner of his eye socket, he could see the others digging as well. They'd been doing this for so long, clawing their way out of the tomb they'd been imprisoned in. Down in the dark, they'd sensed their master's defeat, but it had only strengthened their resolve to escape. So they continued to shred what was left of their hands as they burrowed past bits of metal and stone and wood, inch by inch.

Then there was light. Did it fall upon his face first, or someone else's? It didn't matter: all their thoughts were the same thought, all their eyes saw with the same vision. So as one, they worked harder, until the light poured over all of them. Free, they were free...but the _pain!_ The damnable light was _blinding!_ He shrieked along with the rest, cowering amongst the charred remains of what was once a town as they tried to adjust to such abominable conditions. After a while, they began to stand, one by one, until all were at attention. Some still flinched under the light's harsh glare, but it wasn't enough to deter them from the task at hand.

The trail was found, and the march began. The strongest among them conjured up horses to ride, while the weaker ones had to make do on foot. How they proceeded didn't matter, so long as all their minds were focused upon the same mandate. It was in his mind as well, the rhythm of the words acting like a cadence to accompany their long march: _Traitor...find the traitor...make him pay..._

Jonah Hex sat bolt upright, an intense pain in his chest finally rousing him from the bizarre dream. It _was _only a dream, wasn't it? Rather different from the others he'd been having about being dead, but still...Lord, why did his chest hurt so damn much? He clutched at the area over his heart while his eyes rolled madly in his head, trying in vain to figure out where he was. He was surrounded by trees and soft grass, but that didn't make sense. Hadn't there been a fire? Didn't everything get burned up? Yes...yes, it did, including...including himself.

He didn't want to do it, but Jonah forced himself to look downward. He expected to see nothing but a smoldering corpse, but instead he discovered that he looked perfectly normal. The hand at his chest was covered in undamaged flesh, and even his clothes were intact, from his collarless shirt to his jeans, all the way down to the spurs on his boots. Still not convinced, his other hand reached up and probed his face: it was young and whole, unmarked by either the fire or old scars. _Sonovabitch_, he thought, _the damn thing didn't let me down in the least_. Even as he held his hands before him and flexed them into fists, Jonah could hardly believe that the black ring had once again managed to put him back together as if nothing had happened. Though the shock of it all had blurred his memory somewhat, he could recall just enough to know that the task couldn't have been easy: pinned under fallen trees, the fire had burned every square inch of Hex's body, all the way down to the bone. Despite that, the ring had somehow...reassembled him from whatever had been left, probably filling in the gaps with that strange black stuff the ring seemed to endlessly produce, turning it all into living flesh by means unknown. But while it was just beginning the process of doing this, a group of men in bulky clothes had come along and freed his seemingly-dead body, and Hex decided to run...or had the ring decided? He could remember what a labor it had been just to form words in that state, so perhaps it was the ring that made his skeletal frame move, translating Jonah's fear of capture into an order to run. Either way, he had escaped those oddly-clad men, then fled for God knows how long until he collapsed in this lush clearing, his mind apparently shutting down until the ring was finished repairing his body. _Probably better thet way_, he thought as he ran the material of his shirt between his fingers. _It hurt bad enough when the ring pushed thet black stuff through muh skin just tuh make a knife...cain't imagine how loud Ah would've screamed if'n it was doin' the same thing tuh make clothes_. It certainly explained why his chest hurt so badly when he woke up.

Thankfully, that pain was now down to a dull throb, easy to ignore as he got to his feet. Daylight poured down upon the clearing, making it hard for Jonah to see. He shaded his eyes with one hand, muttering, "Be nice if'n the ring had given me muh hat back as well," then quickly followed that up with, "Thet don't mean Ah want y'all tuh make it now! No more makin' stuff without muh say-so!" He still wasn't sure how much the ring understood, but he figured it was best to be explicit, just in case. As he looked around the clearing, he realized that his order was unnecessary: his hat was only a couple of feet away from where he'd been laying. As he knelt down to pick it up, he saw that it was perched on top of a large leather satchel. "Whut in blazes?" he said aloud, putting his hat on before he picked up the satchel and turned it over in his hands. It looked oddly familiar, and when he saw the initials _JWH_ burned into the corner of the leather flap, it finally hit him. _This is from muh scoutin' days with the Army...or at least it looks like the one I toted around back then. But why would the ring make a copy of this?_ He opened the flap and found his gunbelt and Dragoons nestled inside - like himself and his clothes, they'd been perfectly restored to their pre-fire condition - along with a U.S. Army-issue wool blanket. _This ain't whut Maggie gave me_, he thought. _How come the ring gave me this instead of thet other blanket?_ The answer came to him scant seconds later: _'Cause yer mind knows this blanket better than the other one, just like it plucked a knife outta yer memory thet y'all were familiar with. Puttin' yer body back together, thet's one thing, but makin' something outta thin air? Reckon it needs a blueprint of some sort. So it picks things outta yer mind thet yuh know real well. Y'all know this satchel a whole lot better'n thet bag with the funny "zipper" thing on it, so it made this one instead. Serves the same purpose, right?_

Jonah nodded absently as he thought on this. In that sense, the black ring seemed to operate in the same way as Hal's green one: whatever he could think of, the ring could make, though as Jonah looked over the rest of the satchel's contents, it appeared as if there were some limits. The bottles of water that had been in the duffle bag were no longer present, and the "map" was now an odd patchwork affair, with much of the accordion-folded paper left blank. _Those are the parts yuh didn't bother tuh look at_, Jonah told himself, _so the ring ain't got no idea whut tuh put there._ He sadly found that it was a similar case with the scrap of paper that had replaced the one Maggie originally jotted her telephone number upon: Jonah hadn't memorized it, so the best the ring could do was a childlike scrawl of symbols that vaguely resembled numbers, with the only legible portion being Maggie's name. "Yuh did yer best, son," he said quietly. "Ain't no way Ah kin fault yuh fer tryin'."

The moment the words left his mouth, he saw that a skein of indigo had formed over himself. Was he actually becoming _comfortable _with the notion of having this black ring trapped inside of him? To be sure, the thought of what it had done to heal his body and restore his belongings didn't make him want to vomit like it had the last time, but Jonah still had no desire to make this a permanent relationship. "Yuh'd best not be playin' with muh head," he growled, a sudden wave of red wiping away the indigo. "Ah may be stuck with yuh fer now, but soon's Ah get the chance tuh ditch yuh, Ah'm not gonna hesitate one damn bit. So don't yuh dare try an' convince me otherwise, yuh savvy?"

Jonah slung the satchel over his shoulder and, after a brief glance at the painfully-bright sun to get his bearings, began to walk west. Due to his mad dash through the burning woods, he had no clue as to where he might be in relation to Coast City, so west seemed like the best choice - at worst, he'd walk all the way to the Pacific Ocean, then head either north or south to reach his destination. After a while, he noticed that the land was sloping upward and the trees thinning, so he glanced behind in the hopes that he could spot a road or something else to help him figure out where he was. The woods he'd been walking through stretched for miles, with a large section to the northeast that was now nothing more than blackened cinders. "Damnation," he breathed, "Vista Verde must've been right in the middle of thet." With that assumption in mind, he pulled out the map, but the ring had done such a poor job of replicating it that Jonah couldn't make head nor tail of it. Frustrated, he tossed it to the ground...then his jaw fell open as he saw the map evaporate into an ashen cloud that swirled up into the air before him. He backed away from it, but it soon swept over his body and absorbed right into his skin. A chill ran up Jonah's spine as it happened, not only because of the oddity, but also because it felt familiar, and he didn't know why. "Please, stop doin' crazy shit like thet!" he yelled. "It ain't endearin' y'all tuh me in the least!" Like all the other times Jonah directly addressed the ring, there was no way of knowing if it understood, and he was beginning to wonder why he bothered.

The land eventually leveled off, and the woods stayed fairly sparse, though Jonah was feeling far too weary to take notice of either. Not a physical weariness, more spiritual: he wasn't sure how much longer he could endure this bizarre life he'd been reborn into. He admitted to feeling a small amount of gratitude that the black ring seemed to care enough about him to keep putting him back together, but the price...after what happened to him in the fire, could he still be considered human? Was he still Jonah Hex, or just some construct that _thought_ it was? He hoped Green Lantern could tell him for sure, one way or the other.

It was just past midday when Jonah spotted the first signs of civilization: a split-rail fence that bordered a large grassy clearing. Nailed to one of the posts was notice reading PRIVATE PROPERTY - NO TRESPASSING. Jonah presumed it was referring to the land on the other side of the fence and not where he was standing, though there didn't appear to be anything of note on either side. _Best not tuh aggravate whoever put it up, they might take a potshot at yuh_, he thought, and began to turn northward so as to follow the fence line. That was when he saw the horse standing about thirty yards away in the clearing, its head bent to graze. Jonah actually felt his breath catch in his throat at the sight of it - he hadn't seen an actual horse since the day he died, and this one was such a beautiful specimen. A fine, strong-looking mare, about two years old going by its general size. Sadly, Jonah still couldn't see colors properly, so its coat appeared to be a faint orange as it cropped the grass, but that did little to mar its beauty.

Forgetting all his fears of potentially being shot, Jonah swung his legs over the fence and walked slowly up to the animal. "Hey there, girl, ain'tcha just a sight fer sore eyes?" he said, brushing a hand gently along its back. The horse lifted its head and regarded him for a moment, then went back to grazing. "Thet's right, don't mind ol' Jonah none. Ah won't hurt yuh one bit." He continued to run his hands over the animal, letting the coarse hairs of its mane slip through his fingers and breathing in the smell of its sweat. God, he honestly thought he'd never see a horse again! The temptation to just jump on its bare back and ride off was so strong he almost felt dizzy, but he resisted. Whatever else Jonah Hex might have become in these past few days, the one thing he'd never be was a horse thief. Oh, but he could dream, couldn't he? Beneath his palms, he could feel the steady beating of the animal's heart, and he imagined that to be the rhythm of its hooves on the ground as it ran. Just the thought of its existence made him smile: this was the proper way to travel, not inside a cold steel-and-glass monstrosity on fat rubber wheels, belching out smoke that smelled worse than manure. He could understand the need for using automobiles every once in a while - rather like having your own personal train, minus the track - but there was no way to deny the exhilaration of riding hard on a horse across an open plain, the wind blowing through your hair as you stood in the saddle. Did people these days still do that, or were they all fixated on riding in machines?

He got his answer moments later when he heard a little girl's voice some distance away. Jonah let go of the horse and looked further down the clearing to see a man leading another horse, which was dressed in full tack. Seated upon it was the girl, perhaps no older than six, swinging her legs out of the stirrups and saying, "Faster, Papa Mike! I wanna go faster!"

"Once you learn all the basics, you can go as fast as you like," the man replied, guiding the horse by the reins. "First off, you've got to keep your feet in the stirrups." He made the horse stop walking, then went over and slipped the girl's feet back into place. "Remember, this is part of how you steer: by using leg pressure. You can't be acting all silly like this, or else the horse won't know what you want to do."

"But I _said_ I wanna go _faster_." She patted the animal on either side of its neck, repeating her command, "Go faster!"

"Horses don't speak English, honey."

"Why not?"

"Because they're horses." The man said this with an air of infinite patience, and Jonah nodded in admiration as the man continued to gently inform his young student on the finer points of horsemanship. It made Jonah feel good to see this little scene, though that good feeling soon turned to worry when the little girl glanced his way and said loudly, "Papa Mike, who's that?"

Jonah stiffened, unsure if he should run back into the woods or not. His track record so far when it came to interacting with other people in this century wasn't all that good, yet his gut told him that he had nothing to fear from this man. There was also the bonus information that his altered vision gave him: the man's aura didn't show the slightest hint of red. Still, just to be on the safe side, Jonah kept his hands in plain view as he walked slowly towards them.

The man met Jonah halfway, holding up a hand when they were about fifteen feet away from each other. "Hi there," the man said in a wary tone. "Hate to tell you this, but this is private property you're traipsing around on."

Jonah took off his hat and did his best to look tame. "Sorry 'bout trespassin'. Ah saw yer sign an' all, but...well, Ah just wanted a better look at yer horse back there. She's a beaut." He gestured towards the one the little girl sat upon. "Y'all got a lot of them?"

"Just three. That's Duchess behind you, this one's Lucille, and Scout's running around here someplace."

"Are you a cowboy?" the girl suddenly asked.

Jonah smirked and said, "Thet's one way of puttin' it."

"Then how come _you_ don't have a horse?" There was a hint of bragging in her voice.

"Abby, stay quiet for a bit, okay?" the man told her, then said to Jonah, "She's got a point, though: you're not really dressed for hiking cross-country. What're you doing out here?"

"Ah got a mite turned around. Been makin' muh way tuh Coast City on foot, but a fire done blocked muh path, so Ah had tuh leave the road an' take a detour through the woods."

"You mean that wildfire that swept through to the north of us?" the man asked. "You've been lost in the woods for two days?"

Jonah was struck dumb. _Two days?_ He couldn't have really been out of it for _that_ long, could he? Then again, with all the damage inflicted upon him, the black ring might have needed that much time to put Jonah back together. He rubbed a hand over his face as he tried to come to grips with losing two days in the blink of an eye.

The man stepped forward, awash in indigo. "Are you okay? You look kind of pale."

"Ah'm fine, just...tired. Ah'm gettin' really tired of all this." Jonah saw the unspoken question in the man's eyes, and the gunfighter shook his head as he told him, "Don't ask, it's too damn complicated. Just point me in the direction of Coast City an' Ah'll be on muh way."

He nodded vaguely southwest. "It's about an hour from here if you take the highway...although, frankly, you don't look like you're up for walking that far."

"Then Ah'll hitch a ride. Ah know the trick," he replied, sticking out his thumb.

"There's nobody you can call to pick you up? In Coast City, I mean."

That notion hadn't occurred to Jonah - even when Maggie was telling him about cell phones, she never asked if he wanted to call Hal first. Of course, there was that whole "secret identity" nonsense the Green Lantern was so insistent upon, so she probably assumed that, if the general public didn't know who he really was behind that mask, neither would Jonah. Luckily, that wasn't the case. "Ah don't know his telephone number," Jonah said with some hesitation, "but if'n there's a way Ah could speak with the switchboard operator in Coast City, maybe..."

"You want to call Information? Sure, that's doable. Just follow us back to the house and we'll get you hooked up." The man started to walk back towards the little girl, then paused and said to him, "What's your name, anyways?"

"Jonah...an' yo're Papa Mike?"

The man laughed. "Just Mike. Only my daughter gets to call me Papa." He took up the horse's reins once more as they walked across the clearing to where the house lay. The girl, deciding that quiet time was over, proceeded to tell Jonah everything she knew about horses and cowboys and anything else that seemed important to her, interspersed with her own inquiries to him as to how much he knew about said subjects. Jonah, whose mind was focused elsewhere, kept his responses to a minimum.

The house was a one-story affair, but still rather large, with a stable and pole barn nearby. A young stallion - Scout, presumably - was loitering near the stable entrance, and it sidled up to the mare when Mike brought it to a stop. Jonah wasn't surprised to see a hint of violet come over both animals when they got close to each other. Mike picked Abby up off the saddle and set her on the ground, saying to her, "Go tell Papa Tom that we've got company, okay?"

She nodded and ran towards the house. "Papa Tom, Papa Tom! We found a cowboy!" she yelled long before she was even close to the door.

Mike laughed again as he led the horse into the stable proper. "Just let me strip all this gear off of her, then we'll see about getting your friend on the phone."

"Actually, do yuh mind if..." Jonah stepped up beside him and laid a hand on the saddle. "There any way yuh could let me do this?"

"Um...sure, if you know how." Mike stepped aside, and Jonah set to work. With gentle care, he removed the harness and saddle, which he laid on a nearby rack, then picked up a brush and went over every inch of the horse's coat. Jonah even knelt down and coaxed it to lift each hoof in turn so he could inspect the underside. Though it had been over a century since he'd performed such tasks, he could recall how to do them with perfect clarity, and it gave him a feeling of satisfaction that had been long absent from his soul.

When Jonah was finished, he said to Mike, "She's in good shape 'cept fer the hooves...they're gettin' a mite overgrown. If'n yuh got the tools, Ah kin trim an' reshod 'em fer yuh. Ah'll even check the other horses over if'n yuh like."

"No, I...we've got a guy coming out next week that does all our farrier work." Mike shook his head in amazement, saying, "Abby was right: we _did_ find a cowboy."

"Not anymore. Now Ah'm just a fella with a whole lot of useless talents." His eyes darted to the floor momentarily. "Thank yuh fer lettin' me do this. The world ain't made much sense tuh me lately, but this...Ah've dreamed fer decades about doin' things like this again."

"Well, if that's the case, I wouldn't go to Coast City. That place is nothing but concrete and skyscrapers. But if you insist..."

The two men left the stable and headed for the house. Another man was just opening the door as they approached. "Okay, please fill me in on this, grown-up words only," he said.

"Just a poor wandering soul in need of a phone, Tom." Mike stepped inside and Jonah followed. The interior of the house was a mixture of modern amenities and rustic charm, which Jonah found pleasing. In fact, he was so busy looking around the front room that it took him a moment to notice the flare of violet light behind him, and he turned to see that Mike and Tom were kissing. It wasn't a lingering kiss, more of a quick peck, but it was enough to make Jonah's eyes widen. Tom caught sight of the look and pulled away from Mike, saying to his partner, "I think we're scaring the straights."

"The two of yuh...yo're..." Jonah pointed at Mike. "But yuh've got a daughter."

"Thanks to a mutual friend, _we_ have a daughter," Tom replied, the violet turning fast to red. "What's the matter, you a homophobe?"

"Ah don't even know what thet word means."

Mike slapped the back of his hand against Tom's chest. "Take it easy, he's a good guy. You remember where I left my phone?"

"In the kitchen. I put it in the charger for you. Again."

"Thanks. Come on, Jonah." Mike led him further into the house, with Tom giving Jonah a sideways glance as they passed by, but the gunfighter held his tongue. He recalled the few times back in his day when he'd encountered fellas that liked to ride sidesaddle, and he personally didn't pay it any mind, just so long as they didn't ask him to ride as well.

Little Abby was in the kitchen, standing on a stool with a loaf of bread and a couple of jars on the counter in front of her. Mike walked up beside her, saying, "Whatcha doing, honey?"

"Making sannitches," she replied, dipping a knife into one of the jars.

"_Sandwiches_, hon. The word is _sandwiches_." He plucked a small object off of the counter, then came back to Jonah and handed it to him. "Here you go, all fired up."

Jonah stared at the object given to him. It was one of those small rectangular things like he'd seen those gawkers in Paradise Corners waving around. There were no discernable buttons, just a glass panel with a dozen tiny square pictures set beneath it - aside from the one that looked like a clock and a couple of others, the pictures were sheer nonsense to him. It felt like an eternity passed by before Mike said to him, "First time with an iPhone?"

"Yeah." There were multiple layers of truth in that one word. Maggie had shown Jonah her own pocket telephone, but it hadn't looked anything like this gewgaw, and it certainly would have never occurred to him that the two things were the same sort of device.

Mike nodded and said, "They can be slightly intimidating when you first get one, but once you play with it for a bit, it's easy as pie." He took it back and waved his fingers over the glass panel like a magician performing a trick, then handed it over to Jonah again. "It's dialing."

_How kin yuh tell?_ Jonah thought, but then he heard the soft burr coming from it, followed by a tiny voice saying, _"Information. What city, please?"_ But Jonah didn't respond. After a week of hard traveling, he was having difficulty with the notion that he was really this close to the end of the journey. One telephone call, and it would be over. All he had to do was speak the right words into this strange little device. When the tiny voice asked him again, Jonah brought it close to his mouth and said loudly, "Coast City."

"_One moment," _the voice replied, while Mike told him, "You don't have to shout. The reception's nowhere near as bad as the reviews make it out to be."

Like so much of what he'd heard in this new century, Jonah only vaguely understood the meaning of Mike's words. All he knew was that, back in his day, you had to talk louder than normal to be understood over the telephone. A mite slower sometimes helped too. So when another tiny voice chimed in with, _"Coast City directory. Please state the name of the party you wish to reach,"_ Jonah took a deep breath and said into the phone, "Hal..."

Jonah stopped, his mouth hanging open as his mind scrambled to find something that just wasn't there anymore. He'd forgotten Hal's last name. Jonah knew that he _used_ to know it, but like his old memories of Paradise Corners, there was now a gaping hole where the information should be. For an entire damned week, he'd been thinking of the Green Lantern as simply "Hal", not even realizing that the other half of the man's name had gone missing from his brain. He couldn't even picture what the Green Lantern looked like without that stupid mask, though Jonah was _sure_ he'd seen him without it. What else had he forgotten? Could he still be certain that Hal gave enough of a damn about him to help once he..._if _he found him?

"_I'm sorry, sir," _the voice on the phone said, _"but I need a full name."_

"Ah don't...Ah cain't..." Jonah slumped against the counter, the hand holding the phone slowly sinking down until it hung at his side. "Ah cain't remember. _Ah cain't_..."

Mike reached over and took the phone from his hand. "We'll call back later," he told the operator, then carefully guided Jonah over to a kitchen chair and sat him down. "Can you hear me, Jonah? Are you sick?"

"No...no, Ah'm not sick," Jonah replied, but one look at him said otherwise: his face had gone pale again, and there was a slight tremor in his hands. "Ah'm...Ah've got problems...with muh memory. Ah'm still gettin' used tuh it."

Tom entered the kitchen. "What's wrong with him?"

"Not sure," Mike said. "I think he's had some head trauma. Is that it?" he asked Jonah.

"Sort of." He glanced from green-red Tom to indigo-yellow Mike. Part of Jonah wanted to confess everything that was wrong with him just so he could relieve himself of the burden, while another part - the part that had existed within him ever since his father first cuffed him in the ear for daring to show weakness - struggled to wipe all signs of emotion from his face. "Ah should...Ah'm just gonna go. Thank yuh fer tryin' tuh help, but..."

"Mister cowboy?"

Jonah turned to see the little girl walking up to him, holding a sandwich that was dripping globs of strawberry jam onto the floor. "Aren't you gonna stay for lunch?" she asked.

"I don't think he wants to, Abby," Tom told her.

"But I _made_ him a sannitch!" She held it up for all to see. "It's peanut butter and jelly!"

The gunfighter silently regarded the little girl, an aura of the purest blue and indigo wrapped around her. Though he still felt distressed about his memory loss, the presence of Abby and her small gesture of kindness took some of the edge off. Before he knew it, Jonah was gesturing for her to come closer. "Yuh real good at makin' them sandwiches?" he asked.

She gave him a big nod. "Uh-huh."

"Make me four of 'em. Ah'm _really_ hungry."

"Okay! Start with this one!" She all but shoved the sandwich into Jonah's face before running back to the mess she'd left on the kitchen counter. Mike did his best not to laugh at the spectacle, and even Tom was shaking his head with a grin. "You didn't have to do that," Mike told Jonah. "Seriously, if you're that hungry, we can feed you something better than PB&J."

"Maybe so...but Ah just cain't resist a pretty face," he said with a hint of a smile, then he took a bite out of the sandwich - the thick layer of peanut butter threatened to glue his jaw shut, but he managed to swallow it. "Once yer girl's done with the rest, Ah'll just toss 'em in muh satchel an' get out of yer hair. Ah've troubled yuh long enough."

Mike's brow furrowed. "Isn't there anyone else we can call for you?"

"There's Maggie," Jonah said, "but she lives in this big truck she drives all around. Kin thet operator connect me with any telephone anywhere? Ah had her number, but...Ah lost it."

"They can only look numbers up by cities, I think. You don't know where..." Mike's voice trailed off as he saw Jonah shake his head. "Well, I'd rather you stay a while longer. You still don't look well enough to me."

"If he wants to go, let him," Tom interjected.

"The man looked like he was going to faint five minutes ago, and you want me to just let him walk out the door and all the way to Coast City? For God's sake, Tom, he's been wandering through the woods for _two days_. He's probably dead on his feet."

_In more ways than one_, Jonah thought.

Tom said, "So what do _you_ want to do? _Drive_ him to Coast City?" As soon as he said that, he followed it up with, "Oh no. _No_. You're not getting in a car with a total stranger and..."

"Says the guy who brags about hitchhiking to Lollapalooza when he was in high school," Mike retorted. "Come on, it's an hour there and an hour back. I'll even put my cell phone on speaker so you can be sure he's not taking an axe to my head."

With a sigh, Tom tossed up his hands in resignation. "Fine. Have your little road trip with the Marlboro Man. See if I care."

"I _know_ you care, or else you wouldn't be putting up such a fuss." Mike gave Tom a peck on the cheek, while Jonah did his best to focus on the sandwich. Lavender or not, he was grateful to Mike for his willingness to help a stranger. With all the Hell Jonah had been through since the fire, he took it as a sign that perhaps things would actually turn out all right in the end. Not being able to remember Hal's full name did put a slight crimp in his plans, but Jonah Hex was still a born tracker. Once he got to Coast City, he'd pick up Green Lantern's trail and follow it until he found the man himself, then they could get down to the business of returning Jonah to normal. After a full week of trials and tribulations, he was almost home free.

_Please, Lord, let the rest of it be a cakewalk from here_, Jonah thought.

_**NEXT ISSUE: Tune in for "Hex and the City"!**_


	7. Hex and the City

**HEX AND THE CITY**

The highway was thick with rush-hour traffic. Vehicles of all shapes and sizes jockeyed for position and seventy miles per hour, their drivers seeming to be only vaguely aware of the others around them. In the distance, incredibly-tall buildings could be seen, gleaming bright in the late-afternoon sun. As they drew closer, a large sign came into view beside the highway:

**Welcome to**

**COAST CITY**

"**The City Without Fear"**

"This is it," Mike said as he angled the car towards the proper exit. "Where exactly do you want me to drop you off, Jonah?"

"Ain't rightly sure." Jonah absentmindedly rubbed the spot over his heart as he stared out the window. The ache was still there, throbbing in time with his pulse, and he still wasn't sure why. Perhaps something had gone wrong the last time the ring put him back together, though he couldn't imagine what, as everything else about him seemed normal...well, as normal as Jonah seemed to be these days. "Any chance we could ride around the city fer a spell?"

"I suppose." Mike gave him a sideways glance, saying, "Please tell me that you haven't been bullshitting me all this time. You really do have friends here, right?"

"Ah've got one friend, but he doesn't know Ah'm lookin' fer him. Been a real long time since we spoke last."

"How long?"

_By muh count, 'bout a hunnert an' thirty-two years_, Jonah thought, but he didn't tell Mike that. Instead, he asked in as casual a tone as he could muster, "Y'all come into the city much?"

"From time to time."

"Yuh ever see Green Lantern?" Again, Hex tried to sound casual.

"Once," Mike answered. "But that was in the _old_ Coast City, before it had been destroyed and rebuilt." He paused, then said, "It's kind of creepy down here."

"Come again?"

"What they did in some areas." They were driving on the surface streets now, past buildings that were just beginning to show signs of weathering. "They tried to replicate some of the old landmarks...you know, put them in the same places they'd been before? I understand what they were trying to do, but..."

"It's like they're tryin' tuh raise the dead," Jonah said tonelessly.

"Oh, I don't even want to talk about _that_ incident. Abby's still having nightmares."

Mike guided the vehicle around a corner, pointing them towards downtown, while Jonah continued to stare out the window. Since he was unable to remember Hal's last name, the only way he'd be able to find the man he sought would be via his Green Lantern identity. With that in mind, Jonah had been trying to use his altered vision to his advantage by keeping his eyes peeled for any flicker of green in the sea of gray that stretched out before him. Since Hal's ring ran on willpower, he should theoretically be bathed in that emotional hue constantly, but so far, the only flashes of green Jonah had spotted were from some rather average-looking folk passing by - Jonah stared hard at each of their faces, but he didn't feel even the slightest twinge of recognition, nor did he see the proper sort of ring upon anyone's hand. He began to suspect that this might take longer than he thought when he suddenly caught a glimpse of a brilliant surge of green light spilling out from behind a row of buildings. Jonah sat up so fast that his seatbelt immediately locked and pinned him to the seat. Cursing and slapping a hand against the belt release, he said to Mike, "Stop here!"

"What, in the middle of the street?"

"_Do it!"_

The forcefulness of Jonah's command took Mike by surprise. He hit the brakes, setting off a cacophony of car horns behind them, then watched as Jonah wrested free of the seatbelt's grip and picked up his satchel from the floor of the vehicle. "I'm beginning to think Tom was right about you," Mike said. "You're a bit of a whack-job."

"Ain't rightly sure whut thet means, but Ah reckon it ain't complimentary." Jonah popped open the car door, saying, "Ah'm gonna let it slide, though, 'cause of the way y'all helped me." He then got out of the car, oblivious to all the blaring horns and profanities being lobbed at him. "Take good care of them horses, y'hear?"

Mike hadn't even begun to form a reply to that when Jonah slammed the door and took off running towards the light. He dodged vehicles until he reached the sidewalk, then barreled through the knot of pedestrians that had the misfortune to get in his way. A few were knocked to the ground, but Jonah didn't care: he was within a hair's-breadth of finding Green Lantern, and _nothing_ was going to stop him.

As he got closer, Jonah noticed the green light never wavered, and it occurred to him that Hal might be involved in a battle somewhere behind those buildings. It certainly would explain the brilliance of the light, yet he couldn't hear anything that sounded like trouble coming from that direction, nor did the people nearby seem concerned. Nevertheless, Jonah snaked a hand down to his satchel and felt around for one of his Dragoons, ready to whip it out and use it should the situation arise.

He rounded a massive marble-covered building and bolted into the open area beyond...then stopped, confused. He was standing in the midst of a large public park, made up of numerous islands of grass bordered by cobblestone paths. A few statues were scattered about, including a huge three-dimensional replica of Green Lantern's symbol, which appeared to be the source of the green light. _But why kin Ah see it?_ Jonah thought. _It's just a statue, not a livin' thing._ He approached it, and as he felt the warmth of its light wash over him, he realized that, while the statue as manmade, the light itself was pure willpower, a construct from Hal's ring. That's why it wasn't merely a blob of white like every other bright object he looked at, though he still couldn't fathom what the purpose of the thing was, other than to trick him into running pell-mell across the damn city.

Other people milled about the park, some of them pausing to look at the giant lantern like Jonah, or perhaps they were more interested in the four human-shaped statues that flanked it. To Jonah's eyes, the statues wore rather strange attire, save for the one dressed like a sailor - the outfit hadn't really changed at all in the past century - and it was only after he saw the words "NO FEAR" engraved upon the lantern and took into account the general appearance of the whole area that Jonah finally made sense of it all. _It's a war memorial_, he reasoned silently, _like the one Ah saw in Paradise Corners. The sailor's obviously a Navy man, an' the other fellas...well, reckon the Army's uniforms must've changed an awful lot over a hunnert-odd years._ As for the lantern's presence in this tableau, Jonah took it to be a show of solidarity on Hal's part, a sign of respect from one peacekeeper to another. He recalled how the Green Lantern had once described himself as being like a Texas Ranger, which meant - to Jonah, at least - that he was a lawman of unique caliber, and it reassured him to see that Hal wasn't just blowing smoke.

The bounty hunter was still ruminating on this when a child's shout caught his attention: "Look, Mom! Green Lantern's here!"

Jonah whipped his head around to see a little boy running to the far side of the park while a young woman chased after him. The boy soon stopped before a man dressed in long underwear who bent down to shake the boy's hand - such a friendly gesture wasn't out of character for Hal, but the thick orange glow that surrounded the man certainly didn't seem right. Jonah made a beeline for them, and the closer he got, the more sure he was that this man wasn't who he appeared to be.

"What's your name, my little Lantern buddy?" the man asked the boy.

"Jeremy Collins!" The boy didn't seem to notice that the Green Lantern before him was skinny as a rail beneath his poorly-sewn spandex costume, or that his mask was held in place by an elastic band. "I waved at you when you flew over our house last month. Did you see me?"

"Of course I saw you. It's my job to watch over everybody." The man grinned and put his hands on his hips in an effort to look heroic. "Say, I bet you'd like an autograph, huh?"

"Yessir!" The boy looked ecstatic the man led him over to a cart that reminded Jonah of a small drummer's wagon. Loaded on top of it and hanging off the sides were a vast array of trinkets emblazoned with Green Lantern's symbol: shirts, buttons, masks, postcards, even tiny figures like toy soldiers. _Now _Jonah understood what the orange glow was about.

As the man wrote "Green Lantern" on a picture of the genuine article, Jonah strode up to him and grabbed him by the front of his cheap costume. "Hey, what do you think you're doing?" the man said.

"Ah think Ah'm about tuh wallop somebody fer makin' money off a good man's name," Jonah growled.

"You leave him alone!" The boy struck Jonah in the leg with his small fists. His mother wisely pulled the boy away, but not before the boy loudly declared, "He's a superhero, and he'll kick your butt!"

"Ah seriously doubt thet." Jonah flashed a wolfish grin at the faux Lantern. "How 'bout yerself, skinny-britches? Think y'all kin kick muh butt?"

The orange glow slowly leached away to yellow. "Look, I-I don't want any trouble. I'm just trying to make a living here."

"Not off'n them, yuh ain't," Jonah replied, nodding towards the mother and her son, both of whom were now a good distance away and were quickly getting further. "Y'all remind me of a fella Ah met once. He was sellin' picture postcards of dead outlaws, an' Ah set him real straight on how Ah felt 'bout thet...an' those weren't even fellas Ah _liked_." Jonah pulled the man close and said, "So how do yuh think Ah feel 'bout y'all dressin' up in them longjohns an' playin' at bein' a fella Ah actually got an ounce of respect fer?"

"Oh God," the man groaned, "you're one of those hardcore fans, aren't you?" He tried to draw himself up a little straighter as he said, "Listen, if you've got a problem with what I do, take it up with the city. They're the ones who gave me the vendor's license to do this, same as all the other GL cosplayers. Heck, I know a couple of guys who dress up like Green Lantern and Sinestro, then act out a fight in front of City Hall five times a day on Saturdays. They rake in a lot of cash, believe me."

"An' the real Green Lantern lets y'all get away with it? Or does he get a cut of the take?"

The man scoffed. "What does Green Lantern need with money? I heard he lives for free up on the moon with the rest of the Justice League. He only comes down to Earth to bust heads, y'know?"

_Thet cain't be right,_ Jonah thought. _It don't fit with the Green Lantern Ah know_. Hal had struck him as being a bit uppity, what with his fancy ring and his "no killing" rule, but he knew from listening to Hal talk about Coast City oh so long ago that the Lantern cared for the place far too much to live apart from it. Wherever Hal hung his hat, it was most certainly down here amongst his people, not up in the stars. That was why he wore a mask and kept his real name secret, just like John Tane used to do in Mesa City...and that town only held a thousand people at most, not the millions that supposedly lived in Coast City. "So, if'n he don't live down here," Jonah asked, trying to follow the thread of the man's reasoning, "how in blazes do y'all let him know when yuh need him?"

"I dunno, I guess the cops got a way to call him up. Or maybe it's the National Guard that does it."

"There ain't no way for regular folks tuh get his attention?"

"Sure there is." The man smirked. "Put on some weird outfit and rob a bank. I bet he'd find your crazy ass real quick."

Jonah fell silent, still clutching the front of the man's costume, then suddenly shoved the man into his souvenir cart - both the man and a good amount of the merchandise were soon laying on the ground. "Hey, come back here!" the man yelled as Jonah walked away at a brisk pace. "If I ever see you in this park again, I'm gonna shove that ugly hat of yours down your freaking throat, you bastard!"

"Mommy, Green Lantern said a bad word!" a little girl passing by with her parents said.

The man turned towards them and gave his best apologetic smile, but it obviously wasn't cutting it. _I think it's time to call it a day_, he said to himself.

* * *

The Emerald Theatre was one of the most popular nightclubs in town. Modeled after a 1940s-era building that had existed in the old Coast city, the Emerald was a blend of antique architecture and modern amenities. The place opened for business just before sunset, and the line to get in already stretched halfway down the block, with a brick wall of a bouncer standing at the front door. He looked over each potential clubber with a practiced eye, weeding out the troublemakers and those who were far too young no matter what their fake IDs said. Unfortunately for him, he never took notice of the tall man in the cowboy hat who watched him from across the street for a good half-hour. It wasn't until the man began to march straight towards him that the bouncer became aware of the man's presence, and even then, the only thought the bouncer had time for was: _Is that guy wearing a gun holster?_

A split-second later, Jonah cracked the bouncer across the back of the skull, using one of his Dragoons like a four-pound sap. The bouncer fell to his knees, dazed but trying to regain his feet, so Jonah brought his own knee up and rammed it into the bouncer's jaw - that was the final rattle the man's brain's needed to knock him out cold. Once he was down, Jonah knelt over him and checked his pulse to make sure he hadn't killed him. The gunfighter's plan was to merely get attention, not spill blood, and when he saw many of the people raise their silly little pocket telephones instead of aiding the injured bouncer, Jonah knew he would get the attention he wanted. "Y'all might want tuh call the police while yo're at it," he said to the crowd, then stepped over the bouncer's body and through the club doors.

The music that filled the club - if one could truly call it music - pounded against Jonah's chest and eardrums. The sensation reminded him of standing too close to a cannon when it fired. "Nothin' but noise," he said, his voice barely audible to even himself. No one near the doors seemed to notice what had occurred outside, all of them too apparently too absorbed in either the music or the person standing closest to them to care. _They'll notice me soon enough_, Jonah thought, and began to push his way through the sea of bodies. Everyone smelled of booze and sweat and perfume, especially the men, which made Jonah wonder if perhaps _all_ the fellas of this time were a bit lavender. Such things weren't really his concern, though, so he dismissed the notion and looked around for the best vantage point in the room. He spotted a bar that ran the length of the dance floor, the area behind it well-stocked with a dizzying array of bottles and beer-spewing spigots, and deemed it as good as any.

Squeezing up against the bar, Jonah boosted himself up onto it. Some of the patrons nearby hooted and cheered him on, and one inebriated fellow tried to join Hex, but he quickly shoved the drunk back down. "Hey, man, you can't do that!" the bartender yelled at Jonah, but the man soon got a boot in the face as Jonah stood up on the bar top to survey the room. There was an enclosure near the back where the music seemed to be coming from, but instead of a band, all Jonah saw was one guy in earmuffs leaning over a table full of dials and switches, his head bobbing in time to the beat. _Must be like thet fancy music box in Maggie's truck_, Jonah thought, then took aim at it with his Dragoons. _Good thing, 'cause now Ah don't feel guilty 'bout stoppin' this racket._

A volley of bullets slammed into the music machine, which responded with a squawk of feedback before falling into dead silence. The man behind it dove for cover, as did quite a few other people in the club. Many of the folks standing near the bar scrambled away, but some continued to cheer, as if they were too drunk or too stupid to recognize the danger. _Well, Jonah boy, yuh got their attention. Now yuh need tuh thin the herd_. With that in mind, he began to shoot out the light riggings that hung from the ceiling. Glass and bits of metal rained down, but no one appeared to get seriously hurt by the destruction. It did, however, cause a lot of people to start running for the exits. Soon, out of the hundreds of people that had been crowded into the club, only about thirty remained, all of them bathed in thick yellow auras as they cowered on the dance floor. Jonah was sure there were more hiding in other rooms or frantically trying to push their way out of the club, but that was fine by him. The more people got loose, the faster word would spread...and the sooner Green Lantern would show up to take care of the "problem" Hex created. He knew he was sure to catch Hell for doing it, but dammit, after a week of hard traveling, he just wanted to get this over with.

"Y'all listen up," Jonah said to the remaining patrons. "If'n any of yuh got them little telephones on yuh, Ah want y'all tuh take 'em out an' call up the police. Understand?"

None of them moved, they just stared at Jonah in fear. Then one of the women, her hands shaking, pulled a cell phone out of her purse. It took her a few tries to dial the number, but she finally do so, and when the call connected, she managed to stammer out, "H-h-he told me to c-call...got a gun...we're at the Em..the Em-muh-muh...Emerald...he _told_ me to _call_..."

Jonah hopped down from the bar, saying, "Give me thet." The woman backed away as he approached, so he lunged at her and grabbed the phone away. "Is this the police?" he said into the phone.

"_This is 911 dispatch_," a man's voice replied. "Can _you tell us what's going on?_"

"Muh name is Jonah Hex," he told the dispatcher. "Ah'm at the Emerald Theatre, an' Ah'm holdin' at least thirty people hostage. Ah've got guns with no permit on 'em. If'n yuh send any policemen in here, Ah won't hesitate tuh shoot." It was all a bluff, of course: Jonah didn't intend on shooting anyone, but in order for his plan to work, everyone had to think of him as a serious threat.

"_We've had reports of gunshots at the Emerald_. _Are you claiming responsibility?_"

"Son, are yuh deaf or just stupid? Yes, Ah'm the man with the gun, an' Ah ain't givin' up this here gun unless y'all send Green Lantern in here tuh take it from me." Jonah glared at the patrons nearby as he said, "If'n he ain't here in an hour, Ah start shootin' again." His declaration caused one of the women to scream hysterically.

The phone went silent for a moment, and Jonah thought perhaps the connection had been cut, but then the voice came back to say, "_I don't have the authority to negotiate with you, sir_."

"This ain't a negotiation," Jonah answered, "it's an order. Y'all need tuh find whutever rock Green Lantern's hid under, right now, an' when yuh do, tell him Jonah Hex has come tuh town fer a little visit. Yuh clear on that? Find Green Lantern, an' tell him muh name. _Jonah Hex_. He'll know it well, Ah promise."

The dispatcher started to say something else, but Jonah had already tossed the cell phone back at its owner, telling her curtly, "Turn the damn thing off." He then walked back over to the bar, slid behind it, and examined the bottles on display. After choosing one full of tequila, Jonah got back up on the bar and sat cross-legged upon it. As he tried to open the bottle, he said to the captive patrons, "Anybody got a cigarette?"

"You can't smoke in here," one of the men said in a timid voice. "It's against the law."

"Oh, fer Chrissakes." He gave up on opening the bottle the proper way and smashed the neck of it against the bar, spilling booze everywhere. He then splashed what remained in the bottle into an empty glass sitting nearby. "No guns without a permit, no smokin'...next thing yuh know, they'll outlaw drinkin'."

* * *

Like a verdant comet, Hal Jordan streaked across the night sky, intent on getting back to his apartment so he could get some rest. The Green Lantern had been working almost non-stop for the past week, first cleaning up the damage wrought by Nekron and the Black Lanterns, then jumping right into the search for the emotional spectrum entities which had inexplicably taken up residence on Earth. In all that time, he'd barely had a moment to himself, much less sleep. The ring was capable of keeping Hal alert for as long as needed, but that was no substitute for actually laying down and catching forty winks.

As Hal got within a few blocks of his apartment building, an alarm signal began to sound out of his ring. It was programmed to constantly scan the emergency frequencies all across Coast City and listen for certain keywords - including Green Lantern's own name - in order to help him figure out where he might be needed, and it had apparently picked up on one of them. There was a temptation to shut the alarm off until he was rested, but Hal knew he'd never be able to forgive himself if something terrible happened because of it. "Okay," he said to the ring as he hovered in midair, "what have you got for me?"

**[Initiating playback]**, the ring replied, followed by a man saying, _"...ain't givin' up this here gun unless y'all send Green Lantern in here tuh take it from me. If'n he ain't here in an hour, Ah start shootin' again._"

Hal's brow furrowed. The voice was familiar, but he couldn't think of who it could be - the only thing that came to mind was horses. As he tried to puzzle out the association, a second voice said, "_I don't have the authority to negotiate with you, sir_."

"_This ain't a negotiation, it's an order,_" the first voice spat back, and the growling tone that punctuated the words was enough to make everything click into place for Hal. "You have got to be kidding me," he said aloud, just as the next part of the playback confirmed his suspicions: "_Y'all need tuh find whutever rock Green Lantern's hid under, right now, an' when yuh do, tell him Jonah Hex has come tuh town fer a little visit_."

"Ring, stop playback and trace the call back to its source," Hal said, rubbing his temple with his fingers. With all the rest of the madness present in his life at the moment, the last thing he needed was a time-lost cowboy wreaking havoc in his town. When the ring was done with the trace, it projected a map for the Green Lantern, who gave it only a cursory glance before tearing across the sky. "I swear, Hex, if you've harmed even one hair on anybody's head, I'm gonna make both sides of your ugly face match."

* * *

"Please, why won't you let us go? I've got a kid."

"So do lots of folks. Sit yer ass down," Jonah said from his perch atop the bar. He waved his Dragoon at the hostage until the man sat back down on the floor with the rest. Jonah then glanced at the watch he'd taken from one of the other captive patrons. It had been about fifteen minutes since he'd spoken with the police, and he had no way of knowing that his demand was being carried out. _Reckon Ah'll just have tuh hope Ah scared 'em enough tuh do it_, he thought, knocking back the last of the tequila. If Green Lantern didn't show up after the hour had passed, though, what would he do? He certainly wasn't going to shoot an innocent person, which meant the police would call his bluff. _This ain't exactly yer best plan, Jonah boy. All thet desperation buildin' up fer the past week has made yuh sloppy._

As he contemplated his next move, the dull, throbbing ache in his chest suddenly flared up again. Grunting, Jonah pressed his hand over the spot and tried to ride out the pain, but it seemed to grow with every heartbeat. The captive patrons caught sight of his distress and began to mutter amongst themselves. "Settle down over there," Jonah managed to say, but the words sounded distant to his ears, and when he looked their way, the image was blurry, like he was looking through a waterfall. _Whut the Hell's wrong with me?_ he thought, slowly easing himself off the bar so he could lean against it instead. Then the smell of dry desert air began to fill his nostrils, and ghostly figures seemed to move at the edge of his vision. "Stay away," he said aloud, and raised his Dragoon in warning, only to find that the hand holding it was turning corpse-like. "God...not now. Don't do this tuh me now," he moaned, and tore at his shirt with his other hand, unbuttoning it and the longjohns beneath so he could look at his chest. Not surprising, the area right above his heart was nothing but dead gray flesh, and it was quickly spreading, as was the pain that his transformation was bringing with it. "Doesn't...make sense," Jonah said. "Ah cain't...cain't be dead again..."

Before he could figure out why it was happening, the pain hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. Jonah let out a howl and collapsed to the floor, writhing in agony as his body fluctuated between living and dead. He struggled to regain control of himself, but it felt like the world was slipping away from him, until he was no longer laying on the nightclub floor, but rather standing alongside a desert highway surrounded by other walking corpses - some were dressed in old uniforms, others in buckskin. His vision seemed to shift from one vantage point to the next, and he could feel other thoughts crowding into his brain...thoughts of a traitor, and what they would do to him once they tracked him down. Slowly, Jonah remembered that he'd experienced this sort of thing earlier in the day, right before he woke up in the woods. He'd thought it was only a dream, but now he wasn't so sure. Then Jonah caught a view of one of the corpses kneeling down in the dirt to examine a set of footprints by the side of the road. _Ah know this area, _Jonah thought as continued to struggle against the pain._ This is where Maggie picked me up in her truck._ The moment the thought formed in his mind, he could feel all the corpses tense up, and he realized in horror that the connection apparently ran both ways.

_Get the Hell out of muh head!_ Jonah silently screamed. He struggled even harder now, trying to free his mind from the influence being exerted over it, but it was like swimming through quicksand, with each movement threatening to suck him back under. _The pain...use the pain tuh yer advantage_, he told himself. _Corpses don't feel nothin', but yer livin' body's wracked with it. Take hold of the damn pain an' remember whut bein' alive feels like!_

That seemed to do the trick, and Jonah soon felt that his mind was his own again. His senses were still muddled, and his body was trembling, but at least he was aware of his true surroundings once more. He was sprawled out on the floor, and he could just barely make out someone leaning over him, surrounded in a halo of light. A hand came into view, and despite how blurry it was, Jonah saw a ring with a familiar shape upon its finger. Reaching up with his own hand, Jonah took hold of it and said in a weak voice, "Hal..."

"Actually, my name's Boston," a man replied.

Jonah blinked rapidly, and his vision began to clear. He soon saw that the person leaning over him wasn't Green Lantern, but the man he'd briefly glimpsed outside Paradise Corners. Like before, the man's aura was nothing but brilliant white light, so bright that Jonah felt like he was staring into the sun. Behind him, Jonah could see a young woman cloaked in that same brilliance. Jonah slowly sat up and looked from one to the other, confusion evident on his face.

"Hi there," the man said to Jonah. "Long time no see."

_**NEXT ISSUE: A Dove, a Deadman, and a Green Lantern walk into a bar...**_


	8. A Matter of Perspective

**A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE**

_***Note: The next few issues take place before Green Lantern #56 and Brightest Day #13.***_

"So...um...who do we talk to first?" Dove asked. "Who do you think is going to be the White Lantern?"

"Personally, I have no idea." Boston Brand looked at the files spread upon the table between them. There was a stack of loose photos as well, and he began to shuffle through them like playing cards, saying, "I guess we need to single out those who'd be...I dunno, worthy? Someone who already upholds what the white ring stands for."

"Other than life, you mean? Because if that's the only qualifier, doesn't that make everyone living a candidate?"

"Not necessarily." Boston fanned out the photos. "I noticed you and Oracle left out all the light-based bad guys, or any villains who've come back from the dead."

Dove looked surprised by his observation. "Of course we did. If a supervillain got a hold of this ring..." She paused a moment as his point sunk in, then said quietly, "You think anyone who's killed before should be disqualified?"

"Don't you?"

Dove bit her lip, and Boston couldn't help but think of how adorable she looked whenever she did that. "It's something that never occurred to me. I mean, they're all heroes..."

"One person's hero can be another person's villain." He pushed two of the photos to the side, saying, "Green Arrow's out, and so's Barry Allen."

"_Barry Allen_ killed someone?"

"Not long before he died himself. It was accidental, from what I heard, but it still counts." Boston glanced at the remaining pictures. "We'll have to check up on the rest of these people, maybe ask them outright if needs be. I know, it's not the nicest way to approach this, but we have to nail down some sort of criteria, or else we're just..."

**[Balance]**, the white ring on Boston's hand suddenly said.

Dove and Boston looked at each other. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"Beats me," he said, then asked to the ring, "Are you telling us we're on the right track?"

**[They're upsetting the balance. You have to help him achieve it again]**.

"Help who? The chosen one?" Boston stood up from the table, as did Dove. "Dammit, ring, why can't you ever give me a straight answer?"

**[Help him]**. White light flared out from the ring, engulfing Boston and Dove, and when it faded, they were no longer standing inside Oracle's headquarters in Gotham City, but rather what looked like a dance club. A group of people were huddled in a dim corner, and one of them said, "He's over there," pointing to the other side of the room.

"Who are you talking about?" Boston asked.

"The guy with the gun."

The two heroes turned to see a young man curled up on the floor. There was a massive revolver in his hand, but he didn't seem to be in any shape to use it. "What happened?" Dove asked. "Did someone attack him?"

"No, he just started grabbing his chest and yelling, then he dropped. I think he's on drugs. He threatened to shoot us if Green Lantern didn't show up."

"Get these people out of here," Boston told Dove, then moved closer to the young man, who appeared to be in too much pain to even notice his approach. The reason for this became evident when Boston saw portions of the young man's flesh turn gray and desiccated, then back to normal within the space of a few seconds. Carefully, Boston knelt down and turned him onto his back in order to get a better look at what was happening to him. To Boston's surprise, he quickly recognized the young man. "I saw this guy a few days ago, when the ring was still bouncing me around," Boston said to Dove when she returned to his side. "He was sleeping in a field, and he didn't appear to be in very good shape then, either."

"Was he like this?" She winced as the young man suddenly cried out, his back arching while his whole body took on a corpse-like appearance.

"No, he just looked like he'd been having one heck of a nightmare. I remember the ring was babbling that 'balance' nonsense back then, too. Funny thing is, after this guy woke up, I'm pretty sure he saw me. No one else had been able to see me before I ran into you." Boston paused, realization dawning in his eyes. "You don't think he's..."

"The ring said to help him," Dove replied, "so no matter who or what he is, he must be important somehow." As she talked, the young man's condition began to stabilize: his body regained its vitality, the dead flesh receding to a spot on his upper chest, which was in plain view beneath his unbuttoned shirt. His eyes were shut, but they fluttered open as Boston reached out to examine the remaining dead flesh before it disappeared. With a trembling hand, the young man took hold of Boston's own, saying in a weak voice, "Hal..."

"Actually, my name's Boston," he replied. The young man blinked rapidly at this, obviously confused, then tried to sit up - he was trembling all over now, so Boston steadied him with his other hand. "Hi there," he said as the young man stared at him. "Long time no see."

"Yo're real?" The young man's Southern accent was so heavy it was almost comical. "Thought fer damn sure Ah was hallucinatin' the other day." His eyes slid over to Dove. "Didn't see the girl, though."

"Her name's Dove...she wasn't with me yet."

The young man grunted, then said, "Better help me off'n this floor, boy. It's cold." Boston did so, and the young man immediately stumbled over to the nearby bar, bracing one hand against it as he tucked his revolver beneath his belt - there was a matching one in the holster laying against his right hip. "So, did Green Lantern send y'all in his stead, or are yuh a couple of charlatans like thet fella in the park?"

"Excuse me?"

"Yo're wearin' a ring, but it's white, not green. Matter of fact, yo're _both _white, even though she ain't wearin' a ring at all." He rubbed his eyes, saying, "The two of yuh is glowin' so much, it's a wonder y'all don't burst into flames."

Dove stepped closer to him. "Do you mean our auras? Is that what you're seeing?"

"Reckon thet's so," the young man answered, squinting at her. "Would yuh mind steppin' back afore Ah go blind, missy?"

"I'm sorry, it's just...we're on a special mission, and we think you might be a part of it."

"Unless thet mission involves findin' Green Lantern, Ah ain't interested." He turned away from them and began to walk the length of the bar, keeping one hand on it for support.

"What do you need to find Green Lantern for?" Boston asked. "And why the heck were you holding a gun on those people?"

"Muh business with the man is muh own, not yers. As fer the gunplay, it was a half-assed attempt at gettin' his attention." The young man had slipped behind the bar and was rummaging through the liquor bottles stacked against the back wall. "But instead of the man Ah wanted, all Ah attracted was a pair of yammerin' fireflies. Now, unless y'all want tuh tell me where he is, Ah suggest yuh fly off afore Ah swat yuh."

* * *

_Looks like the party's just getting started, _Hal Jordan thought as he descended upon the Emerald Theatre. Two police cars were already in front of the place, along with an ambulance where some medics were examining a group of people, while good-sized crowd had formed on the other side of the street. "Any idea of what's going on inside?" Green Lantern asked one of the cops nearby as he touched down in front of the nightclub.

"From what I hear, it's all over already." The cop pointed at the people by the ambulance. "It sounds like a couple of your fellow capes showed up and hustled the hostages out before the shooter could hurt anyone. Been quiet since then."

"The shooter hasn't been escorted out yet?"

"Nope, and we're not even sure which capes are in there: best description we got is that it's a man-and-woman duo. We were about to move in with..."

"I'd rather you held off for a few more minutes," Hal interrupted. "The shooter asked for me, so let's see what happens when he _gets_ me." With that, Hal strode up to the nightclub doors and went inside, his mouth set in a hard, thin line. The expression wasn't all for show: Hal really was mad that Jonah Hex had decided to use Coast City as his own personal shooting gallery. The other two times they'd met, he had made it clear to the cowboy how he felt about killing, so to have Jonah attempt to break that cardinal rule in _Hal's own city_...dammit, he didn't care what screwy time-traveling twist brought them together this time, he was going to knock the man flat!

The interior of the nightclub was dim, but Hal could pick out the glimmer of broken glass on the floor. The shards crunched under his boots as he walked into the main room, which was deserted except for three people. Hal recognized Dove right off, and after a moment of thought, he realized the man next to her in the trench coat and red Spandex was Boston Brand, the newly-resurrected Deadman. Neither of them had noticed Hal yet. "What do you need to find Green Lantern for?" Boston was asking the third person, who was standing behind the nightclub's bar with his back to them all. "And why the heck were you holding a gun on those people?"

"Muh business with the man is muh own, not yers," the person behind the bar replied, confirming what Hal already suspected. Even without seeing his face, the presence of the Confederate officer's hat and ivory-handled Dragoon slung at his hip, coupled with that unmistakable voice, were enough to prove to Hal that the shooter was indeed Jonah Hex. The man wasn't wearing his old gray uniform tunic, opting instead for a collarless white dress shirt, but Hal figured he'd ditched it due to the warm California weather. "As fer the gunplay," Jonah continued to say as he perused the liquor bottles, "it was a half-assed attempt at gettin' his attention. But instead of the man Ah wanted, all Ah attracted was a pair of yammerin' fireflies. Now, unless y'all want tuh tell me where he is, Ah suggest yuh fly off afore Ah swat yuh."

"Judging by the mess you made in here, Hex, I'd say you've done more than enough swatting tonight," Green Lantern called out, which made all three of them turn in his direction. "You're damned lucky that I didn't let those cops outside come in here and haul..."

The rest of the threat died in Hal's mouth as Jonah finished turning around. He had been expecting to look upon the same middle-aged, weathered face he'd seen on two other occasions, with the same horrifying scar engulfing the right half of it. But instead, he was looking upon a young, unmarked visage that seemed leaps and bounds away from the one he knew. The only things that remained unchanged were the icy-blue eyes and the gravelly voice, which took on a hint of annoyance as Jonah snapped, "Well? Are yuh just gonna stand there all slack-jawed, or are yuh gonna say 'Hello'?"

"Hello," Green Lantern repeated, then shook his head and asked the first question that came to mind: "What the Hell happened to your face?"

"Yeah, Ah know, thet damn white ring turned me into a pretty-boy like yerself." Jonah picked up a bottle of whiskey and managed to wrestle the top off. "Least it makes me a mite neater in muh drinkin' habits," he said, taking a swig.

"White ring?" Dove echoed, to which Boston added, "Don't look at me, I didn't do it."

Hal, on the other hand, immediately caught the gist of what Jonah was saying. "Oh my God," he whispered. "When I found out you were here, I automatically assumed it was time travel again, not...not _this_."

"Nope, Ah got here the honest way: Ah dropped dead, then spent the next hunnert-odd years as a stuffed corpse." Jonah sneered at Hal. "Thanks a whole helluva lot fer gettin' muh hopes up 'bout thet, by the by."

"I'm sorry, Hex, I really thought..."

Boston held up his hands, saying, "Wait a minute, time out. Dove and I are a bit lost here. Who the heck is this guy, GL?"

"His name's Jonah Hex. He's a bounty hunter from the 19th century," Hal answered. "And up until last week, he was as dead as...well, as _you_ were. I guess the White Lantern brought back more than the twelve people we already knew about."

"Yuh mean it wasn't just me?" Jonah's eyebrows shot up. "Who else is runnin' about? Please tell me Bat Lash ain't one of 'em, Ah don't think Ah could stand havin' him around."

"Sorry, Hex, the other twelve aren't anybody you know, they're all a lot more recent. Aside from you, Boston here has been gone the longest."

"Do you think there's some kind of significance to that?" Dove asked. "Why would the white ring bring back someone who's been dead for an entire century?"

"I don't know, but I _do_ know that we need to go somewhere else to discuss all this." Boston turned to Hal. "Didn't you say there's cops outside waiting to haul your pal away?"

"Unfortunately, there are...but I might be able to bluff a way around that." The Green Lantern hopped over the bar and approached Jonah, saying, "Hold out your wrists."

"Whut fer?"

"Because if we walk out of here and you're not restrained, the cops won't believe the line I'm going to feed them. Take off your holster, too."

Jonah's eyes narrowed, then he grunted and did as Hal asked, setting both the bottle and his gunbelt upon the bar. "Y'all want the knife in muh boot while yo're at it?"

"No. I can't see it, so most likely the cops won't either." As Hal's ring produced a set of handcuffs, he noticed how badly Jonah's outstretched hands were shaking. "Are you okay?"

"Ah ain't been okay fer a damn long time," Jonah told him. "Come on, let's get this dog-an'-pony show of yers out of the way."

* * *

It was a short, simple lie: Green Lantern told the cops that Jonah was a "person of interest" in a case the Justice League was working on, and therefore needed to remain in his custody. They didn't seem all too happy about it, but since no one had been seriously injured by Hex's shenanigans, they agreed to it under the condition that Jonah be turned over to the Coast City P.D. as soon as the League was done with him. Jonah himself tried to hide his amazement over the whole affair, reflecting again on Hal's old "Texas Ranger" analogy. Just how much authority did all these folks in longjohns hold over regular people?

Once he was done with the cops, Hal whipped up an emerald sphere to carry away the four of them. As it soared high in the air, far from prying eyes, Jonah said to Hal, "Ah do appreciate the help, son. This week's been one godawful thing after another, an' Ah'd just about reached the end of muh rope."

"I'd say you must have if you're actually admitting that you need help." He removed the cuffs, then handed Jonah back his guns and satchel. "Just keep this in mind the next time you get the urge to shoot somebody. You're on _my_ turf now Hex, which means you play by _my_ rules."

Jonah gave him a nod, and the sphere continued to drift across the night sky, eventually coming to rest on a flat-roofed building a few miles away from the nightclub. "We shouldn't be bothered up here," Hal said as the sphere dissolved into nothing, "which is good, because we definitely have a lot to talk about. Starting with you." He gestured at Boston. "You vanished not long after the Blackest Night ended. Have you been hanging out with Dove all this time?"

"We just met a few days ago," Dove replied. "I've been trying to help with his mission."

"What mission?"

"The one the White Lantern gave me." Boston held up his hand - to Jonah's eyes, the ring on his finger looked like a star fallen to Earth. "Ever since I came back to life, it's been speaking to me, dragging me all over the place." He nodded towards Jonah, saying, "Not long before I ran into Dove, it took me to see your cowboy buddy here."

Hal glanced over at Jonah, who nodded in agreement. "The fella showed up outta nowheres, then disappeared afore Ah could figure out was goin' on. Reckoned it was muh eyes playin' tricks. They ain't been right since this all started." The bounty hunter then turned around and walked towards a large metal cooling unit sitting atop the roof. "'Scuse me while Ah rest fer a spell. Ain't so steady on muh feet at the moment."

Hal watched as Jonah plunked himself down next to the cooling unit, leaning back against it and letting his trembling hands dangle between his legs. To Hal, the fact that Jonah wasn't bothering to hide his exhaustion either meant that he trusted the Green Lantern enough to let it show, or he was becoming too far gone to even care. Hoping it was the former, Hal looked to Boston and asked, "What did the White Lantern tell you to do?"

"It said I have to find the 'chosen one', the person who's meant to wear the white ring and protect all life." Boston cocked an eyebrow. "Not as easy as it sounds."

"Yeah, it does like to be vague, doesn't it?" Hal ran a hand through his hair, saying, "It told me that I need to track down all the other entities, but it didn't tell me _how_. It also showed me a vision of all the people it resurrected...but Hex wasn't among them. I'm sure of that."

"The white ring keeps to referring to 'balance' whenever Mr. Hex is around," Dove offered, "plus he could see Boston when no one else could. When you take it in altogether, it seems like all the signs are pointing towards him being the chosen one we're searching for."

Hal gave her a look of surprise. "_Jonah Hex_? The chosen protector of all life? That's gotta be the craziest thing I've ever heard."

"Why is that? Has he done something that you think disqualifies him?"

"I'd say single-handedly killing 336 people disqualifies him...at least that's according to a book I read." Hal looked over at Jonah. "That number sound about right to you?"

From his resting spot, he answered, "Ah always reckoned it tuh be well over five hunnert, muhself. 'Course, Ah ain't one fer keepin' score."

Dove blanched at Jonah's casual tone. "My God...you're some kind of _mass murderer_?"

"No, he's an Old West gunfighter," Hal corrected. "He's from a time when things were a bit looser in regards to how justice was carried out. Luckily, Hex has got a sense of honor that puts him on the side of the angels, so I try to cut him some slack when it comes to his spotty record. When I'm around, though, I ask that he show more restraint."

"Well, I think we can safely knock Hex off the list," Boston grumbled, "but we still don't know why the white ring keeps singling him out."

"Maybe yer white ring's tryin' tuh warn yuh 'bout the black one Ah've been carryin' around all week," Jonah said.

All three heroes gaped at him. "Please tell me you're joking," Hal said after a moment.

"Wish Ah was, son." Jonah tapped a finger against his breastbone. "The damn thing's stuck in here, an' it's caused me nothin' but trouble. Thet's why Ah came a-lookin' fer yuh: figured y'all were in the thick of thet fight with the overgrown Grim Reaper whut made 'em, so yuh'd know how in blazes tuh get rid of it."

"But that doesn't...how did..." Hal sputtered, then wised up enough to use his own ring to scan Jonah's chest. Seconds later, multiple readouts popped up in front of the Green Lantern. "I don't know how it happened, but there is a Black Lantern ring lodged in the center of his heart," Hal said. "Worse yet, there's tendrils of dark matter branching out from it and into every corner of his body. It's done to Jonah what all the other black rings did to the corpses it took over."

"But he's still alive, or at least he appears to be," Boston said. "It looked like he was flipping between living and dead earlier, but he seemed to shake it off. If this black ring has done to him what you said it has, then how come it hasn't taken him over completely?"

Hal waved the images away, saying, "Maybe because it's trapped inside, it can't make the proper connections...though I can't figure out how it got off his finger and into his heart."

"It didn't," Jonah said. "The black ring thet resurrected me fell tuh dust. This other one was made fer a fella named Don Hall, only he never rose up tuh claim it." This new information caused Dove to gasp, and he said to her, "Yuh know who he is?"

"He was Dove before me," she replied, "and as far as we know, he was the only person the black rings couldn't bring back."

"The white ring couldn't do it either," Boston added. "Believe me, I tried."

"Don Hall of Earth is at peace." The voice was Jonah's, but the tone was much softer than his usual growl, and his expression had gone slack, as if he'd gone into a trance. This only lasted a few seconds before he shook his head with a grunt.

"You still with us, old friend?" Hal asked, hunkering down next to Jonah.

"Not sure. Ah just...Ah was rememberin' something." The growl was back in Jonah's voice. "When Ah first got hold of this ring inside me, it...that's whut it kept sayin' tuh me. The same words, over an' over, an' it felt...it made me feel...Ah don't know." He shook his head again. "Ah'm tired, Hal. Ah just want all this tuh stop."

"I know you do, but there's a lot of things here that just aren't adding up." He laid a hand on Jonah's shoulder. "I need you to start over from the beginning. Tell us everything you can regarding that ring and how you acquired it. Don't hold back anything."

Jonah lowered his head for a moment as he tried to clamp down on the pain in his chest so he would stop trembling. He wasn't sure how much longer he could stand this: it was all supposed to be over once he found Green Lantern, but instead he was sitting on a rooftop surrounded by folks that were more interested in chatting than fixing him. He didn't want to talk, dammit, he wanted to be a normal human being again! Why didn't they understand that?

But Jonah did talk, first with hesitation, then a bit more openly as he became comfortable with speaking the words. He told them about spending a century screaming in the dark, and the madness that fractured his old memories. He told them about the first black ring, the one that conscripted him into Nekron's army and forced him to recover Don Hall's abandoned ring from the fortress beneath the town of Illumination. He told them about the siren song coming from the ring that almost freed him from the black, only to be dragged back under its influence by his fellow corpses. He told them about riding hard to deliver the spoils of war to his master, a mission he never finished because of the white ring that sped at him like a bullet, trapping Don Hall's ring within Hex's own body as he regenerated. Jonah then spoke of the long week afterward: the fear and confusion over his altered state that grew with each new discovery; the brief solace he found in Maggie's arms; the four thieves he killed in a fit of rage after they'd attempted to kill him (Hal somehow managed to hold his tongue when Jonah mentioned that); the desperate search to find Green Lantern, the only person he knew in this time, and the obstacles he had to avoid as he made his way to Coast City. Above all else concerning the past week, though, Jonah spoke about the nightmares, and how he now believed them to be more than just his mind trying to cope with all the trauma. "When Ah came back tuh life, Ah thought fer sure Ah was the only one," Jonah said to the three heroes gathered around him, "but y'all claim thet there's a dozen others who did the same. An' Ah reckon by the looks on yer faces as Ah've been talkin' thet none of these other folk are havin' the same problems as me."

"No, not exactly," Boston said.

"So maybe Ah ain't part of the same group as yerself an' those other folk," Jonah proposed. "Maybe Ah'm part of the group thet's been tryin' tuh get into muh brain...the ones who're still dead like me."

"First off, you're not dead," Hal told him. "Despite that black ring trapped inside of you, my own ring registers you as being very much alive, just like the other twelve people who came back. Secondly, every single Black Lantern in existence was wiped out once Nekron was defeated. There aren't any left anywhere."

"Except fer me. Ah've still got a damn ring, Ah'm still seein' things all funny, Ah cain't be killed...Hell, muh Dragoons still fire bullets even though the cylinders are empty! An' whut do yuh think of this?" Jonah reached into his boot and pulled out the weapon concealed within. "Ah needed a knife a few nights ago, so the ring made one fer me without muh askin'. It hurt like yuh wouldn't believe when it pushed through muh skin, but otherwise it did a fine job."

"How does all this prove that there's still Black Lanterns running around?" Hal asked.

"'Cause when thet Nekron fella was callin' the shots, all them rings could talk with one another. The ring Ah've got still works, thet's plain tuh see...an' Ah'll bet yuh a wooden nickel it kin still hear all the others talkin'. Not enough tuh make me a puppet on a string like afore, but enough tuh mess with muh head." Jonah rubbed the spot above his heart. "Ain't sure how much longer thet's gonna be true, though, so yuh'd best pry this thing outta me afore it's too late."

"I wish I could, but it's impossible," Hal told him. "The ring's worked its way through your entire body. Even if I could safely remove it from your heart, pulling on all the other tendrils would rip you to shreds. You'd die from internal bleeding almost immediately."

"So long as it's over an' done with, Ah don't care."

"You're serious, aren't you?" Hal stood up, saying, "God, Hex, you're crazier than I ever thought you were. I am _not_ going to _kill_ you!"

"Why the Hell not? Ah've been a goddam corpse fer a hunnert years, so all yuh'd be doin' is layin' me tuh rest again," Jonah said. "Ah'd rather be all-the-way dead than like this."

"There might be another way," Boston said, and knelt down in from of the bounty hunter. "My ring told me that I had to help you achieve balance again, so maybe I can use it to destroy the black ring without killing you. That is, if you'll let me give it a try."

"Cain't make things any worse, Ah reckon." Jonah pulled his shirt open, saying, "Just give it Hell, okay? Don't hold back on muh account."

Boston nodded, then pressed his hands flat against Jonah's chest and concentrated on the power contained within the white ring. Soon, the two of them were encompassed in a halo of light, the brilliance of which blinded Jonah completely. He could feel the warmth of it passing over him, but as for the pain inside his body, it neither grew nor lessened. Jonah was about to tell them so when he heard a voice speak out, one that sounded familiar in an odd way:

**[It isn't time for this yet!]**

The next thing Jonah knew, the light was gone and Boston was flying backwards across the roof - Green Lantern caught him in an giant emerald baseball glove before the former Deadman could go over the edge. "What the heck happened?" Hal asked.

"No clue," Boston replied, setting foot on the roof again. "The ring said this isn't the right time, then pushed me off. It's that whole 'being vague' problem again."

"I'll give you points for..." Hal began to say, only to be cut off by Jonah screaming. The two men turned to see Dove kneeling next to him as he lay on his side, shaking violently. "He's changing again," Dove told them, "just like he was when we found him in the nightclub."

Hal scanned Jonah again with his own ring and said, "Tell me what's happening."

**[Dark matter quotient currently in flux], **the Green Lantern's ring replied**.**

"What's causing it? And what can we do to stop it?"

After a long pause, the ring answered, **[Unknown]**.

* * *

The transition was almost instantaneous: one moment Jonah was sitting on the rooftop, the next he felt like he was being torn apart, his mind getting thrown down a dark tunnel while his body stayed behind to be shredded. Like before, he was assaulted from all sides by thoughts and images, but this time, he tried to isolate and hold onto a single one in the hope that he could figure out what exactly was going on. Hal wasn't convinced that these "Black Lanterns" were still running about, so Jonah knew he had to collect some proof, which meant staying alert and keeping quiet until he had some.

One particular image caught his eye, and Jonah focused on it as best he could until the rest of the noise around him became muted. It was a small room, cramped, objects thrown into disarray. The Black Lantern whose eyes he was seeing through was in the process of tearing apart a coat made of rough cloth, with braiding stitched onto the collar and cuffs. A sense of recognition swept over Jonah, which he quickly tried to extinguish - Jonah was sure that it was his emotional reactions that alerted them to his presence last time, and he had no intention of making the same mistake twice. He had to keep his thoughts neutral, cold, distant...

"Okay, buddy, if you're still in there, you'd better step out right now," a woman's voice said. Elsewhere in the world, Jonah could feel his spine stiffen, yet that was the only reaction he had, even as the voice added, "Look, I'm coming up, and I'm armed, so don't get any ideas!" The image before Jonah's eyes swung around until he was looking at a closed curtain, and Jonah knew who was standing behind it. "Last chance!" the voice hollered.

Jonah wanted to holler himself as the Black Lantern tossed the coat through the slit in the curtain and growled, _"Where is he?"_ But he didn't. He felt paralyzed, helpless, unable to utter a single syllable as he watched a pair of deathly-pale hands reach out and pull Maggie Dupree through the curtain, throwing her against the wall of the tiny berth in the back of her truck until she dropped her gun. _"I can smell him all over this room, you Yankee whore,"_ the Black Lantern said. _"How long ago did you bed down with him? ANSWER ME!"_

"Oh God," Maggie sobbed, her aura an ugly smear of yellow. "Please, I don't...I don't know where he is. Please..."

"_Don't lie to me! Are you trying to rile me up, whore?" _The Black Lantern pressed itself against Maggie, saying, _"Then again, maybe you like things a little rough. Eh? I always knew you Yankees couldn't be as genteel as a proper Southern woman. You all spread your legs for every willing man that comes around."_ Its dead lips hovered near Maggie's grimacing face. _"And I am soooo willing right now. Been a long time since I had a furlough."_

The plan of remaining unnoticed flew right out the window was Jonah screamed at the Black Lantern within his mind, _Don't yuh dare touch her, yuh maggot-ridden skunk!_

"_Did you hear something?"_ the Black Lantern asked Maggie. _"No, of course you didn't. Damn shame. I sure you would've liked to have heard your beau's voice one last time. But don't worry, he can hear you loud and clear. Can't you, Hex?"_ The Black Lantern let out a harsh sound that vaguely resembled laughter. _"There was no point in trying to hide in the black, you know. I was the only one in the whole regiment you could never sneak up on."_

Jonah's mind recoiled at the sudden realization. He had his suspicions, but to find out he was right was almost too much to bear. _Let her go. Ain't no honor in killin' an innocent woman._

"_Ain't no innocents in this war, Hex. You're either with us or against us."_ A bony hand slid across the front of Maggie's shirt. _"And we don't take prisoners."_ With that, the Black Lantern punched right through her chest and closed its hand around her heart.

_NO!_ As Jonah screamed, a new flood of images came over him: dozens of Black Lanterns swarming across the truck stop, some pulling drivers from their vehicles, while the rest poured into the diner, every single one of them tearing their victims apart like a pack of wild dogs. Throughout it all, the sight of Maggie's heart being drawn from her chest remained front and center in his vision. A mixture of love and rage exploded in Jonah's soul with such intensity that he could feel himself moving forward, a phantom bullet launched down the Black Lantern's arm, through Maggie's dying heart, and into something beyond. A riot of color assaulted his eyes, yet he could still see this one wisp of white, a glorious shimmer that called out to him with Maggie's sweet voice. He reached out to her, straining with all his might just to touch her, if only he could touch her, he could bring her back safe and sound, he _knew _he could.

Then he saw it: a thread of silver floating between him and Maggie, so slim and delicate. Jonah grabbed hold of it, and suddenly Maggie was right in front of him, reeled in like a fish. She smiled at him, and it was the most beautiful smile Jonah had ever laid eyes on, the smile of an angel...that soon vanished along with Maggie in a flash of blinding light.

**[Maggie Dupree of Earth is at peace]**, a very small voice said.

* * *

"_MAGGIE!"_ Jonah's body nearly bent in half as he screamed aloud, while the other three heroes did their best to hold him still. He'd been thrashing about for close to a minute, his body going through violent throes of transformation that showed no signs of stopping. But now it seemed as if the ordeal was over, and Jonah went limp upon the rooftop. When the others let him go, he slowly drew up into a fetal position, moaning Maggie's name over and over.

Hal had never seen the man in such a state. Even at his worst, Jonah would usually maintain a facade of strength - sometimes at the expense of those around him - but it appeared that there was a limit to how much punishment he could take. Though it was obvious he was still in pain, Hal knew they couldn't just sit around and wait for him to recover, so he leaned down and asked, "Can you hear me, Jonah? Did you have another vision?"

"They killed her. They killed _everybody_. Ah couldn't do nothin' tuh stop it," Jonah said hoarsely. "They knew Ah was there, so they made me watch."

"Who did? The Black Lanterns you say are still around?" Jonah gave a feeble nod, and Hal asked, "You're certain about this? Do you know where they are now?"

"Yeah, Ah know." He swallowed hard. "Should've known thet's where they was goin'."

* * *

The truck stop was completely dark, as all the lights had been smashed, even the ones inside the diner - the emerald sphere Hal and the others were enclosed in provided the only illumination, and even that didn't extend more than ten feet away. "Everybody stay close," Hal said as they touched down on the blacktop not far from the diner entrance, the sphere dissolving. "My ring says there's definitely Black Lanterns here, but it can't pinpoint them."

"What about life signs?" Dove asked.

"There ain't gonna be any," Jonah rasped, leaning hard on Boston. He insisted upon coming, despite the fact that he could barely stand on his own. "They slaughtered 'em all. They didn't find me here, so they took it out on...on..._nnngh...God_..." His fingernails dug into Boston's shoulder as his living flesh began to turn dead and gray again.

"_What's the matter, Hex? The guilt starting to eat away at you?"_ an unearthly voice called out from the shadows. _"The traitor finally grows a conscience."_

"Come out where we can see you!" Hal made another sphere, much smaller than before but giving off a more intense glow, and sent it into the air so it would light up the area. And it did its job only too well: dozens of Black Lanterns came into view around them, some dressed in Confederate uniforms, others in traditional Indian garb, and even a few in simple chambray shirts and denim trousers. One of the Confederates was toting a pole with a Rebel flag fluttering on top, the Black Lantern symbol painted over it. All of them were armed.

The crowd of corpses parted slightly so a Black Lantern wearing a Confederate officer's coat and hat could step forward. _"We've got you Yankees surrounded,"_ it said. _"Surrender quietly, and we'll kill you quick. Fight back, and I'll let the boys have some fun with you first."_

Hal set his feet and said, "Who put you in charge of this mob?"

"Ah did," Jonah replied. "Thet's muh best friend. Thet's Jeb Turnbull."

_**NEXT ISSUE: "The New Fort Charlotte Brigade!"**_


	9. The New Fort Charlotte Brigade!

_First off, I want to apologize for taking so darn long to re-post these next two chapters. DC2 always gets them first, then I use this site as like a trade paperback collection. Unfortunately, I'm very forgetful about that next step. To make matters worse, it took 6 months for me to complete Ch. 10, so the lag-time from there to here just got ridiculous. Luckily, someone sent me a review yesterday for the 8 chapters that were already up, so I finally got off my butt and am now doing the re-posting I should have done months ago._

_Secondly, those of you who've been reading my stuff for years may remember that I was trying to get a book published (an original novel, not fics). Well, it looks like that may just happen this summer. I'll let you know more details as they become available. You can also keep up-to-date by going to my blog, "One Fangirl's Opinion", via the link under my profile._

_Okay, enough preamble. On with the main feature!_

**THE NEW FORT CHARLOTTE BRIGADE!**

"Who the heck is Jeb Turnbull?" Boston Brand asked Jonah. "And what do you mean, _you_ put him in charge?"

"When thet first black ring got a hold of me, it rooted through muh head an' picked out folks Ah knew...those thet'd make fer a good army tuh invade Illumination. Then it sent out more rings tuh recruit 'em all." Jonah kept trying to straighten up, but could only do so for a few seconds before the pain forced him to lean on the former acrobat's shoulder once again. "After we marched in, we split into two groups: one tuh break into the underground fortress, an' one tuh stay topside an' mop up anybody whut tried tuh run off. Ah put Jeb in charge of the former, while Ah stayed with the latter. Then Jeb's descendant blew up half the damn town tryin' tuh kill me, an' they all got trapped a half-mile beneath the ground. After them other walkin' corpses got wiped out, Ah just reckoned they were gone too."

Hal surveyed the Black Lanterns gathered around them less than twelve feet away, every one obviously eager to attack but wary of doing so, due to the presence of the white ring Boston wore. "The wave of white light must have not been able to reach them down there," he said.

"_It certainly wasn't for lack of trying,"_ the Black Lantern that had once been a man named Jeb Turnbull replied. _"It did a damn fine job of worming its way through the rubble above us and wiping out any of my men it came across. We were just lucky enough to be sealed off from it...but that doesn't mean we weren't aware of what was happening above us."_ Despite the dearth of skin covering Jeb's skull, his face still managed to take on the impression of rage. _"We felt every one of our brethren burn into nothingness, and we swore to dig our way out of that pit so that we could find that damnable traitor Jonah Hex and make him pay for all his crimes, past and present."_

"Why do keep calling Jonah a traitor?" Dove asked.

"_Because that's all he knows how to be. Long time back, Hex pledged himself to the Confederacy, but he later turned his back on myself and our regiment for the sake of the coloreds."_ Jeb pointed at Jonah with a skeletal finger. _"He betrayed us to the Union and let them slaughter us all."_

"Thet's a lie!" Despite the pain, Jonah staggered towards his old friend. "Ah surrendered muhself, but Ah never told them about the rest of yuh! Y'all have the same damn delusion thet yer father did, Jeb!"

"_And you eventually killed him too, didn't you? The betrayal never stops."_ There was a note of disgust in Jeb's voice. "_Nekron offered you a chance to redeem yourself by retrieving the wayward ring, and what did you do? You ran off with it and delivered it into the hands of the enemy! I trusted in you enough to follow you again, and so did my father, but loyalty means nothing to you, does it? DOES IT?"_ As Jeb berated him, Jonah dropped to his knees and clutched his chest, as if the sheer force of the words was causing him injury. Dove knelt down and put her arms around Jonah's shoulders, which made the dead soldier say, _"I suppose we'll be doing your Yankee friends a favor, killing them before you have the chance."_

"Hate to break it to you, but there isn't going to be any more killing." Hal leveled his gaze at Jeb. "The war's over, and you lost. Again."

"_You Yankees are always tryin' to tell us the war's over," _one of the other Rebels hollered, _"and we ain't believed you yet! Long live the Cause!"_ This was greeted with a chorus of whoops and cheers from his fellow corpses.

"Oh great," Boston muttered, "the South's risen again, just like they always promised."

"Not for long," the Green Lantern replied. "Lest you forget, you're lugging around one of the few things that can take these things out permanently. I suggest you use it."

The threat had the intended effect: almost as one, the Black Lanterns began to back away. When Boston raised the hand that bore the white ring, a few of them hissed at the sight of it. "Okay, ring," Boston said as he pointed it directly at Jeb, "let's clean up this mess." He pictured a halo of pure white light bursting out of the ring, engulfing every Black Lantern that surrounded them and turning them to ash...but it didn't happen. Not so much as a spark issued forth. "Come on, what are you waiting for? Fry 'em!"

**[This isn't your fight]**, the white ring informed him.

"Like Hell it's not!" He shook his fist at the Black Lanterns, as if he could knock some of the energy loose, but it did no good. "I think we need another plan, GL."

With a raspy chuckle, Jeb drew the cavalry saber hanging from his belt. _"CHARGE!"_ he bellowed, and rushed straight for the heroes. The other corpses did the same, howling like banshees and raising weapons of their own as they threw themselves into the fray.

Hal barely had enough time to generate an emerald shield around himself and his friends, and within seconds, cracks began to show upon its surface from the force of the Black Lanterns' assault, some of them going so far as to climb on top in an attempt to shatter it from above. Throwing a glance over his shoulder, Hal saw that his shield extended over the diner's entrance. "Everybody inside!" he called out. Dove and Boston both grabbed Jonah and hauled him across the threshold while Hal walked backwards, adding layer upon layer to the shield so as to keep up with the damage being inflicted upon it. Once inside the diner, Hal flattened the shield out in order to create a foot-thick wall of green energy across the entire front of the building. That did nothing to deter the Black Lanterns from assaulting it with everything from rifle butts and arrows to tomahawks and knives.

The smell of blood permeated the air within the diner. Bodies were strewn upon the floor and across tables. Jonah collapsed onto one of the stools lining the counter, and as he did so, he glanced to the side and saw the body of a woman laying not far away, the front of her waitress uniform torn and bloody. "Thet's Rita," he rasped. "She called me a young stud." A look of sorrow crossed his face. "Ah warned Maggie 'bout this...the curse of knowin' me. Everyone here died just 'cause Ah happened tuh pass this way."

"It's not your fault," Dove replied softly.

"It is...it always is. Rita's dead, an' so's Maggie. Even Jeb...if'n Ah'd never met him..." The words were suddenly cut off as a spasm rocked Jonah's body, patches of dead flesh briefly rippling over him. "J-just let 'em kill me, Hal. Hand me over tuh them an' run like Hell while they rip me apart. Ain't right fer a man tuh live like this anyhow."

"That is _not_ an option," Hal answered. "You might be willing to throw your life away, but I'm not. And even if I was, there's still the matter of that black ring inside of you. It's obvious that they don't want anyone living to possess it, so I plan on keeping the both of you as far out of their reach as possible."

Gesturing towards the green barrier between them and the dead soldiers, Boston said, "Gonna be a good trick, considering you've got us walled in here like this was the Alamo."

"I wouldn't have had to do that if you'd done more than fire blanks," Hal retorted. "What happened out there?"

"This ring does what it wants, I don't have a ton of control over it." He nodded towards Dove, saying, "Maybe she can wipe them out instead. Weren't these things just falling to dust in her presence during the last big fight?"

"I lost that ability after I made contact with the Black Lantern battery," Dove answered.

"And my own ring is only a catalyst: without a ring that works on another part of the spectrum, all I can do is hold them back," Hal said. "And I' m afraid even that has its limits."

Boston warily eyed the sea of Black Lanterns trying to pound through the shield. "Is there any way to contact some of those other ring-slingers? Get them here on the double?"

"It's taking a lot of power to maintain this," Hal replied, "but I should be able to spare some to send out a signal."

As the three heroes talked, Jonah stared down as his hands, which seemed to clench and unclench of their own volition. The pain that wracked his body was making it hard to think, not to mention the intermittent flashes from the Black Lanterns that crept around the edge of his consciousness. Their hatred of him was palatable, and nearly as strong as his hatred of his own self. The girl could try and reassure him all she liked, but it didn't change the fact that, wherever he went, death and gunsmoke followed_. An' now Hal an' the others are gonna die too, all 'cause they tried tuh help me_, Jonah thought, still staring as his hands. _Why did yuh do this, Lord? Why bring back a bastard like me if'n muh very presence causes people tuh die?_ Another wave of pain swept through him, and he saw his left hand remain bright and vital while his right turned gray and dead.

No, that wasn't true. His right hand may have looked dead, but he could still see a faint, dirty-yellow aura coming from it - he'd never noticed an aura coming off of dead flesh before. To confuse matters even more, it wasn't the same aura his left was giving off: that one swirled with both yellow and red, plus a line of green as he tried to fight against the pain inside of him. It didn't make any sense for his aura to be split like that, unless...

"It's afraid!" Jonah shouted, surprising everyone. He got off the stool and stumbled over to Hal. "The cussed thing's scared outta its wits!"

"What are talking about?" Hal asked.

"The dead parts of me ain't got the same colors...thet's whut the _ring's _feelin', not me. Maybe thet's why Ah keep flippin' back an' forth: it's so scared thet it's lashin' out, or tryin' tuh get free so's it kin run away." He held up his hands. "Ah know yuh cain't see it the way Ah kin, but it's the truth. The dead parts an' the livin' parts are feelin' two dif'rent things!"

"Jonah, you're delirious," Hal said, putting his own hands on the bounty hunter's shoulders. "The pain's making you hallucinate, that's all. Black Lanterns rings aren't alive to any degree, they just latch onto dead bodies and animate them. There's no souls inside of them, I swear. I know it seems like that's really Jeb Turnbull and your other old friends out there, but they're more like...like big clockwork machines."

"Ah know thet already, dammit! Yuh think Ah couldn't tell thet Ah was the only one still trapped inside their own corpse? Ah'm talkin' only 'bout the ring thet's been ridin' shotgun with me fer a week! It knows whut fear is, an' it's feelin' it in spades!"

"And I'm telling you, that's impossible. When you get down to it, that ring is just a very sophisticated machine. _It can't feel anything._ If I had the time, I'd explain to you about computers and AI, but I don't, so you'll just have to take my word for it now."

"Y'all think Ah'm ignorant, don'tcha? Just some country bumpkin thet cain't handle bein' dropped in the future." He narrowed his eyes at the Green Lantern. "Ah've seen an' done things thet're too horrible tuh even voice, so don't just dismiss me like Ah'm a guh...a goddam ch-chuh..._chhhrrggghh...AAAGGH!"_ Jonah's knees buckled as the dark matter surged up inside his body, rendering every inch of his living flesh completely dead within the space of a heartbeat. Hal managed to catch him and ease him down to the floor, but there was little else that could be done. Jonah's desiccated body shook as choking gasps issued out from his throat - whether they were more cries of pain or a feeble attempt to speak, no one could tell.

Boston came up beside Hal and pushed him away, saying, "We'll keep an eye on him, don't worry. Just get on the horn and call in the cavalry!"

It was hard decision, but Hal agreed: the most help he could provide for Jonah right now was to get him and the others away from this madness. He stepped away from the group and raised his ring hand, his fingers curled in a loose fist. "This is an emergency transmission from Green Lantern 2814.1 to any Corps member in the vicinity..."

"It's okay, Jonah, we're here," Dove said, daring to cradle his ruined face in her hands while Boston tried to keep him from thrashing about. "Just hold on, it should be over soon."

"_Uhhh...buh...buh-back...back..."_ Jonah somehow managed to say.

Dove looked up at Boston, who shrugged and said, "Maybe he thinks he's going to hurt us. Sorry, cowboy, we're not gonna let go until we're sure you're okay."

Jonah whipped his head back and forth violently. _"Back...door..."_

But his warning came too late: an arrow plunged through the air from the rear of the diner and straight through Hal's upraised fist, slicing off the tips of his thumb and middle finger before exiting out the back of his hand. The Green Lantern cried out and clamped his other hand over the gushing wound, then turned to see a slim, red-haired Indian nock another arrow on his bow. "Get Hex on his feet, now!" Hal yelled, then blasted his attacker with his own weapon, using his good hand to support the mutilated one. Just as soon as that Indian went down, though, another charged at him from the darkness. Unlike the first, this new one was built like a linebacker and wore a buffalo pelt over his head like a mask. Hal tried to blast him as well, but before he could get the shot off, the huge Indian slammed straight into Hal and kept going, sending both of them through the wall of the diner and the emerald shield beyond it.

Everything fell into chaos after that. Some of the Black Lanterns outside grabbed hold of Hal and began pummeling him, not giving him the chance to use his ring, while the rest poured into the diner through either the back entrance or the hole in quickly-crumbling shield. Boston and Dove retreated to another section of the diner, dragging Jonah between them, but all they succeeded in doing was pinning themselves into a blind corner, without so much as a window to use as an exit. "And here I was, just beginning to enjoy being alive again," Boston said.

"We need to put Jonah behind us," Dove told him. "If we buy him some time, he might be able to recover and escape."

It wasn't the best plan, but it was all they had, so they propped him up in a booth and turned to face the advancing horde. To their surprise, none of the gun-toting Black Lanterns fired upon them, choosing instead to swing their weapons like clubs or jab with attached bayonets. An even bigger surprise came when Boston punched one of dead soldiers with his right fist: the second the ring upon his hand made contact, the Black Lantern screamed and fell to ash. The others near Boston backed up immediately, much to his delight. "Yeah, that's right, I'm still dangerous!" he shouted. "Don't start some and you won't get none!" He spared a moment to glance over at Dove and smile, but that smile faded when he saw a Black Lantern reach out and tangle his fingers in Dove's hair, yanking her into the sea of corpses before them - she hit the one that grabbed her with enough force to shatter a brick wall, but that only bought her a few seconds of breathing-space before another half-dozen Black Lanterns took hold of her and dragged her out of Boston's view. In a panic, Boston yelled her name, then began to move in the direction he last saw her, swinging at Black Lanterns wildly. Though he managed to take out a few more, he soon found himself overwhelmed as well. They pinned him to the floor of the diner with the sheer weight of their bodies, and two of them grabbed Boston's right arm and held it down so that he couldn't strike any more of them with the white ring.

It was only once Boston was trying to draw breath while being crushed that he realized he'd done exactly what the Black Lanterns wanted him to do.

* * *

_Don't be afraid. Fer both our sakes, yuh'd best calm the Hell down!_ Jonah had been saying phrases like that over and over again in his mind ever since the moment he realized the ring's fear. He still didn't understand it - why would the ring be afraid of its own kind? - but he knew that he had to find a way to get it under control before the Black Lanterns slaughtered them all like sheep. So far, however, no amount of begging or commanding had worked, and instead the ring has been bouncing his mind from one corpse's point-of-view to the next. By some miracle, Jonah had glimpsed Firehair and the others sneaking around the back of the building, yet he'd only been able to give the heroes a split-second warning about it. And now they were all scattered to the four winds, and Jonah himself was completely helpless, his body unable to obey his mind. It was like being trapped inside his corpse all over again. _Yuh've got tuh let me do something_, he silently pleaded. _Ah ain't willin' tuh go down without a fight, yuh hear? Now back off a little so's Ah kin at least make a goddam fist when they come over here tuh kill me!_

Perhaps it was the choice of words, or the ring finally managed to get its fear under control, but whatever the reason, Jonah felt the dark matter recede enough to let his flesh revert back to a living state. Fighting against the pain that still wracked his body, he stood up from the booth and brandished his Dragoons as the Black Lanterns turned their full attention upon him - despite their decayed appearance, Jonah knew all their faces, and he wished to God that he didn't. "Bastards...all of yuh," he gasped. "Bunch of grave-robbin' bastards."

"_Says the man who told Nekron to dig us up,"_ Scalphunter pointed his knife at Hex. _"Just because you refuse to rest doesn't mean we should share your burden."_

Chako grinned like always, his sheepskin vest stained with the blood of those he'd gutted that night. _"He has always been the selfish one, no? He like to kick people when they are down. You kick me many times, Hex, but I think Chako will get the last kick in this time."_

"Go ahead an' try it. Ah'll put a bullet in yer greasy head just like afore," Jonah replied.

"_Not if I put one in you first."_ George Barrow muscled his way past all the others, bearing a shotgun in his hands just like when he'd barged into that Cheyenne saloon a century ago and sent Jonah Hex to his grave - the sight of him was enough to make Jonah feel cold down to the bone. _"I killed you once already, and I'll certainly enjoy killing you again."_

Jonah slowly shook his head. "Stay away from me, Barrow. Ah swear, if'n yuh come any closer..." He pointed his Dragoons at the man, but his hands were trembling so bad his aim kept wavering...and it wasn't just the pain that made him tremble, it was the inescapable memory of bleeding to death on a wooden floor from the twin barrels of buckshot emptied into his gut.

"_What's the matter, old man? Are you yellow? Yeah, I can see that you are."_ All of the Black Lanterns laughed at Barrow's pun as he took a step forward. _"You might be wearing a younger face, but underneath it all, you're still a pathetic, frightened old geezer."_

"Ah ain't afraid of yuh," Jonah said weakly, though his right hand was beginning to dip down towards his stomach, unconsciously trying to cover a wound that no longer existed.

"Don't listen to him, Hex!" Boston called out as the dead soldiers continued to keep him pinned to the floor. "They're just trying to get an emotional response out of you! That's what they..._uhhh!"_ One of the soldiers pistol-whipped Boston across the face to make him shut up.

Barrow took a few more steps forward. _"That's right, Hex, ignore me. Keep on denying the thoughts that've been cropping up in your head for the past week: that you're useless, that you don't belong here, that your only purpose is to bring death to those around you."_ He swung the shotgun around so that the stock of it was facing Jonah. _"Maybe that'll bring you some measure of comfort while you're burning in Hell!"_ With that, he brought the stock down fast, meaning to smash Jonah between the eyes with the butt of the weapon just as he'd done a century ago, but Jonah still possessed enough presence of mind to block it with his left arm. The force of the blow broke his wrist, however, and the Dragoon he'd been holding clattered to the floor. Jonah staggered back, and Barrow quickly closed the gap, swinging the shotgun like a baseball bat and striking the bounty hunter hard enough to crack his skull open. The Black Lanterns cheered as Jonah fell to the floor, his right hand still clutching his other revolver, but he made no move to use it, even as Barrow continued to assault his prostrate form.

"Get up, Hex! You _have_ to _get up_!" Boston yelled, but it was obvious by Jonah's inability to fight back that he'd succumbed to the nightmare of being murdered twice by the same man. When Barrow finally stopped his assault and rolled Jonah onto his back, Boston said, "It's just another stupid black ring! Each of you has one already, so why do you need _that_ one?"

George Barrow looked at him and said, "_A good soldier never questions his orders."_ He then looked down at Hex and added, _"Would've saved yourself a lifetime of pain if you'd only learned that."_ Laying aside his shotgun, Barrow knelt down, cocked back his fist, and slammed it through Jonah's ribcage. The bounty hunter let out a strangled cry that soon rose into an ear-splitting scream as Barrow began to extract his heart: just as Green Lantern had predicted, the ring refused to leave his body without a fight, and the tendrils of departing dark matter were shredding Jonah's flesh from within. With a grunt, Barrow yanked on the organ until the last tendrils snapped off from the body, contracting back into the ring buried in his heart and leaving Jonah still and silent.

A roar of triumph went up from the crowd of corpses in the diner as Barrow held the heart up for all to see. He then started to dig his fingers into it like he was peeling an orange, until the black ring hiding within was exposed. _"Boys, our mission is almost complete,"_ he announced, plucking out the ring. _"Once we deliver this to our master, we...I...I'm..." _ Barrow's hand closed tightly around the ring, and a look of confusion seemed to come across his desiccated features. _"I'm...I'm not...I'm not..."_ A sob issued from his throat, and the hand holding the ring began to tremble, then disintegrate. The sob turned into a wail, and after about five seconds, George Barrow had become nothing more than a human-shaped pile of ash. The black ring he'd been holding remained intact, though, and it fell to the ground as the body lost all cohesion. Chako ran forward and caught it in midair, cupping the ring in his hands like it was the most precious item in the world, but not long after, he too looked rather distressed, and began to babble something in Spanish before wailing and turning into ash as well.

Boston watched the whole spectacle from his position on the floor, utterly baffled as to what he was witnessing. As a third Black Lantern stepped forward to catch the obviously-lethal ring, Boston heard his own ring whisper to him, **[Now is the time!]**

A surge of power ran through Boston Brand as the white ring flared up, engulfing the corpses that held him down in a brilliant flash of light. All the other Black Lanterns nearby screamed and tried to scramble away, but Boston, now cloaked in the garb of the White Lantern, cut them down with a blast of energy. He quickly cast his light through the rest of the diner in order to be sure that no dead soldiers would jump out when he least expected it, then he turned his attention on the pair that remained near Jonah's body. One was a Confederate who had grabbed hold of the black ring and, like the rest, was starting to disintegrate, and the other was Scalphunter, who stood guard between Boston and the Confederate. _"I will not let you take what is ours, white man,"_ he said.

"Going by what I've seen so far," Boston replied, "I don't think you guys will be around much longer to claim it."

With a blood-curdling war cry, Scalphunter lunged at Boston, intent on plunging a knife into his chest, but Boston simply pointed the white ring at him and wiped him out in the blink of an eye, just as he'd done to the rest. There was no need to do the same to the last Confederate, as he became nothing but ash just seconds later, the black ring once again falling to the floor.

**[Catch it!]** the white ring exclaimed.

After seeing what had happened to everyone else who touched it, Boston was hesitant to do so, but he threw himself across the room and caught the black ring before it landed in the pile of ash that now covered the floor. He thought it would burn his hand, perhaps, or for some unseen force to lash out and strike him dead, but nothing of the sort occurred. It simply lay there in his hand, a dark spot in the midst of brilliance. "It's just another stupid ring," Boston said, echoing his earlier comment. "Those Black Lanterns want to kill us all for something that they can't even keep a hold of! Well, not anymore!" He cupped both hands over it and concentrated all the power he could muster upon it, lighting up the inside of the diner like it was the sun itself.

**[Stop it, Boston Brand!]** the white ring told him. **[You'll destroy the balance!]**

"The balance is _already_ destroyed! They killed Jonah Hex, remember?"

**[Jonah Hex is not the balance. The balance lay within him].**

"What?" Boston eased up on his assault, opening his hands to look upon the black ring - despite the enormous amount of power Boston had been using, it was completely unscathed. He watched as the white ring produced a wispy, thin tendril that crept across his palm and touched the sides of the black ring, which soon responded with a much-smaller tendril of its own. The two of them intertwined for a moment, and for some bizarre reason, the sight reminded Boston of an infant taking hold of an adult's outstretched finger. "My God, what's going on here?"

**[Something new. What was once a symbol of death is becoming more than that].**

"I don't get it. Are you saying this isn't a Black Lantern ring anymore?"

**[It is and is not. It has found the balance, but it does not understand].** The tendril of white scooped up the black ring and lifted it from Boston's hand, while another swept over to Jonah's dead body and wrapped around him. **[He does understand, but the balance was always denied him].** The white energy picked Jonah up by the shoulders, letting him dangle above the floor like a mutilated rag doll as his bloody head lolled to the side. **[That is no longer the case]**, the white ring said, then slipped its dark counterpart upon Jonah's left hand.

Boston expected the black ring to start putting Jonah back together - or worse, turn him into a walking corpse - but there appeared to be no change to his wounds at all. "Why isn't it doing anything?" he asked, then realized that the White Lantern's power wasn't having any effect on Jonah either, despite the fact that he was now surrounded by a nimbus so bright Boston had to squint to look upon him. "What's wrong? Why can't you bring him back?"

**[That is not under my control. My part of the plan is done].**

"What you mean 'your part'? I thought this nonsense with resurrecting people was all your idea." Boston looked from Jonah's limp body to the white ring. "Who else is involved in this 'plan' of yours?" he asked.

But the white ring refused to answer him.

* * *

He knew he was dead again. There was no period of shock or confusion like he went through the first time he found himself floating in the darkness. In fact, he took a small degree of comfort in its presence, rather like a prisoner might take comfort in his cell after many years pass and memories of the outside world fade. It was a logical reaction for someone in his predicament, seeing as how he had been dead longer than he'd ever been alive...and who was to say that his brief respite from death had actually happened at all? All that strangeness of the past week - the magic rings, the rainbows dancing before his eyes, the long-departed friends and enemies confronting him, all topped off by that bastard Barrow returning him to the darkness once more - none of that could have been real. More likely that it was just a dream, an intricate fantasy his mind cobbled together in an effort to stave off an eternity of torture for a short while. He didn't know for sure, nor did he care. Jonah Hex was dead, now and forever. That was his reality, and what came before was no longer of any consequence.

There was no way to mark time in the darkness, but he was aware that, slowly, his surroundings were beginning to fade from black to gray. This didn't strike him as unusual, and he expected to soon be looking at the world through the glass eyes of his stuffed and mounted corpse, just as he'd been doing for the past century. He possessed no curiosity about what his limited view would present to him, as he'd passed beyond caring about such things long ago - the world had chosen to forget about him, so he in turn chose to forget about it - but when the dark veil fully parted this time, Jonah couldn't help but feel a little puzzled. Instead of a dusty warehouse or rinky-dink carnival tent, he saw a wooded glade dotted with tombstones. What's more, everything around him was rendered in various shades of gray. A cemetery was the last place he expected to end up, and his surprise at the scene caused him to take a step backward, which led to an entirely new level of surprise: he could_ move_. He raised his hands, which were just as gray as the world around him, and touched his face to discover that the old scars were still gone. "But Ah'm dead," he whispered, and the sound of his own voice shocked him back into silence. _This has tuh be another dream_, he thought, but that didn't stop him from walking into the cemetery and looking about.

Many of the graves had been ripped open, and the smell of damp earth hung in the air. None of the names upon the tombstones were familiar, so he kept on walking, an odd sensation of having his footsteps guided by an unseen force coming over him. At the far end of the glade lay a pair of pedestal-shaped grave markers, each topped with a statue of an angel. _No, they ain't angels, _Jonah thought, _but those are definitely wings on 'em._ The grave for the one marked as Hank Hall was in disarray, yet he gave it only a cursory glance, instead focusing on the other grave and the inscription chiseled upon its pedestal:

**IN MEMORIAM**

**DONALD HALL**

**R.I.P.**

"Don Hall of Earth is at peace," Jonah said under his breath, and indeed, there was no sign of disturbance to either the grave or the pearlescent marble statue watching over it. The only thing amiss about the scene was the Black Lantern ring nestled in the grass covering the grave. Getting down on one knee, Jonah brushed the grass aside so he could see the ring more clearly. It seemed so insignificant laying there, nowhere near as threatening as it seemed when it had been trapped inside his chest and causing him all that pain. _It wasn't a dream_, he realized. _The whole thing, it really happened. Ah was brought back tuh life, an' Ah walked about in the world like a normal human being. But now Ah'm dead again, an' Hal an' the others are still in trouble 'cause of me._ He squeezed his eyes shut, a look of anguish on his face, and said, "Please, Lord, Ah'll do whutever penance Yuh have left fer me without complaint, but spare muh friends. Let muh sins be muh own. Ah'm beggin' Yuh, if'n there's an ounce of mercy within Yuh..."

"I think He has more than enough mercy to go around," a voice beside Jonah said. He opened his eyes to see a young man standing next to him, wearing a costume similar to Dove's. The young man smiled at him, saying, "Hello, Mr. Hex, it's good to finally meet you."

"Who..." Jonah began to say, then his eyes darted over to the statue. "Yo're the fella they made thet cussed ring fer. 'Bout time y'all showed up fer it." Jonah stood up and waved a hand at the ring still sitting upon the grass. "Go on, yo're welcome tuh it."

"Thank you," Don Hall said, bending over to pick it up, "but this ring doesn't belong to me anymore. In fact, it doesn't belong to anyone but itself."

"Whut in the blue Hell is thet supposed tuh mean?"

"It means I'm here to offer you a job, Mr. Hex." He pinched the black ring between his thumb and forefinger and held it out to Jonah. "And if you take me up on it, the reward for doing so will be your life."

_**NEXT ISSUE: "Requiescat In Pace"**_


	10. Requiescat in Pace

**REQUIESCAT IN PACE**

Dove felt like she'd been fighting for an eternity. She had freed herself from the grip of the Black Lanterns that dragged her from the diner, but was still surrounded by dozens of other animated corpses, all of them tearing at her clothes or bludgeoning her with fists and weapons. As she pushed away a soldier that tried to cut out her heart with a Bowie knife, she caught a glimpse of the diner's roof, which appeared to be vacant of Black Lanterns, and got an idea. After knocking a few more of her assailants back, she launched herself into the air and landed on the roof, where she promptly collapsed. All she wanted to do was rest for a few minutes, then she could dive back into the fray and try to find Boston and the others.

Something groaned behind her, and she leapt to her feet - unsteady as they were - to discover Green Lantern sprawled out on the roof not far from where she'd landed. "Oh my God," she whispered, taking in the numerous wounds that had been inflicted upon him as well, including a nasty set of gouges across his chest. He'd managed to generate an emerald-green bandage to hold together his ring hand, which had been mutilated by a Black Lantern's arrow right when they invaded the diner, but there was still blood seeping out around the edges. Kneeling over him, she brushed a hand across his bruised cheek and said, "Can you hear me?"

Another groan, then Hal's eyes opened a crack. "Did the cavalry come yet?" he rasped.

"No." Dove slipped an arm under Hal's back to help him sit up. "What are you doing up here? Did you notice the same thing, that these Black Lanterns don't fly?"

He nodded, saying, "It's not that surprising. Most of them were dead before the Wright brothers were even born. If they can't grasp the idea, they probably can't do it." He glanced over at the edge of the roof. "One of them might think of making a ladder, though."

"I'm not sure if they can manage that: I also noticed that they rarely fire their guns, and the ones with bows try to retrieve their arrows. They may have us outnumbered, but I'd say their rings are running low on power."

"Possible, but don't count on it," he said. "Where's Jonah and Boston?"

"Still inside, I think. I haven't seen them since..." Before Dove could finish her sentence, a great roar of triumph rose up from below. "What's going on down there?"

"Don't know," Hal replied, "but it doesn't sound like it's in our favor." He pushed Dove away, saying, "You need to get airborne again. Find the League, the Society, _anybody _that can help us out. I'll do my best to keep them corralled here."

"You're not in any shape to do that. How can you even manipulate your ring with your hand all messed up?"

"If I concentrate, I'll do just fine. Now go!" As Dove began to move away from him, they heard another roar, but this one sounded more painful than triumphant, and saw a bright white light emanating from below. Dove carefully peered over the edge of the roof, hoping to spot Boston down there fighting his way through the Black Lanterns, but it looked like the source of the light was still inside the diner - the corpses on the outside backed away from the building until they were once again safely encased in shadow. Then she felt something warm beneath her feet, and looked down to see shafts of light beginning to shoot up from hairline cracks in the roof. One of the cracks was right beneath Hal, and as the light engulfed him, his green uniform immediately changed to that of a White Lantern, and his wounds began to heal at an incredible rate. Another shaft hit Dove with the same results, along with a familiar voice speaking in her mind: _**Please, both of you stay up here, don't put yourself at risk anymore. I just need a few more minutes to convince Jonah of what he has to do.**_

Then the light let go and returned them to normal, both their bodies and costumes repaired, though it continued to pour out of the diner below. "Did you hear that voice?" Hal asked as he flexed his ring hand, which was whole and strong once more. "I guess the Entity's got some sort of plans for Jonah Hex after all."

"You may be right," Dove replied, "but that wasn't the Entity talking."

* * *

"Whut kind of a job?" Jonah asked, eyeing Don Hall with suspicion. "If'n it involves thet cussed ring, forget it. It's yers anyhow, so take it an' go have fun back on Earth."

"I can't do that," Don answered. "My time on Earth is done. I'm at peace now."

"So Ah've been told. Now leave me be so's Ah kin find some peace of muh own."

Don pulled his hand back, removing the black ring from sight. "I know the last week has been very confusing for you, but considering this was never part of the original plan, I think you've handled it all remarkably well, just as you always do. Time and again, you've proven yourself able to adapt to any situation, no matter how bizarre."

"Reckon it don't get much more bizarre than this." Jonah gestured at the gray landscape. "Far sight better than bein' trapped inside a corpse, Ah'll grant yuh thet."

"This is just a temporary place, somewhere we can talk. I know you have questions..."

"Not a one."

"Really? What about all the times you asked God why you were brought back to life?"

Jonah narrowed his eyes at Don but said nothing.

"There is a reason, Mr. Hex, and it's not for some imaginary penance. If you're willing to listen, I'll tell you, then you can decide for yourself if the reason is valid."

Seconds ticked by in silence - an eternity in that monochrome world - before Jonah replied, "Take off thet stupid mask first. Ah like tuh see who Ah'm jawin' with." Don did as he asked, revealing a young, serene face, though still lacking in color. "Better," Jonah said with a nod. "Now yuh kin tell me whut's so damn important about an old saddle-bum like me."

"A change of scenery may help you understand better." Don reached out and took hold of Jonah's arm, an action that caused the cemetery around them to become like smoke. When it cleared, the two of them were surrounded by countless pale figures, all of whom stood perfectly still, seemingly unaware of the newcomers in their midst. "This is Nekron's realm," Don said, "a dark matter dimension that acts as a threshold between the worlds of the living and the dead. Every sentient being that dies passes through here, no matter where their final destination lay."

"So it's Limbo, then."

"Not in the way you think of it. There's a scientific law stating that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. The form of energy that many call a soul follows that same law." Don gestured to the sea of figures around them. "Dark matter is psycho-reactive to a degree, and when a soul undergoes its transformation from a living state to dead, some of that energy sloughs off and is left behind, which the dark matter then absorbs and reshapes into what you see here. Each one of these is an exact copy of a soul that's passed through this realm, containing all the facets that made up the real one, but with no mind to guide it."

Realization dawned in Jonah's eyes as he thought of Jeb and Chako and all the others that had risen alongside him, and how they may have talked and acted like the people they resembled, but inside they were actually hollow and soulless, unlike himself. "These are whut the black rings are made out of," he said, glancing at Don, who gave a slight nod of assent. "The first one thet took hold of me, thet was made outta whut muh soul left behind when Ah died?"

"And this one was mine." Don raised his other hand, which still held the black ring. "When these rained down upon Earth, they were attracted to the bodies they were once a part of, but before they could latch on, each one had to briefly make a connection between the body and the actual soul in order to trick the body into accepting it."

"An' yers couldn't make the connection."

"Not a complete one. Nekron hadn't thought of what might happen if a ring tried to connect with a soul that had found true peace." Don smiled, saying, "I overloaded it."

"Congratulations. Whut does all this have tuh do with why Ah got brought back?"

"This is _exactly_ why. Do you recall the way you felt when you first laid hands upon this ring, how its words seemed to drive away the dark matter inside of you?" As Don talked, Nekron's realm faded back into smoke, returning them to the cemetery. "Black Lanterns cannot comprehend what true peace is. They only know the false notion Nekron programmed into them. When they encounter the absolute balance of emotion that comes from knowing true peace, they disintegrate. Out of the trillions of black rings that were created, thousands of them tried to interface with peaceful souls like my own, and my ring was the only one that didn't disintegrate in the process. Somehow, someway, it held itself together through sheer willpower."

Cocking an eyebrow, Jonah said, "So Ah was right: thet ring of yers kin feel an' think just like anybody else. But how come none of them other black rings kin do thet?"

"How did life make the jump from mindless creatures to ones that recognized and adapted to their environment? A whim of nature, a divine spark...whatever you want to call it, it happened here, in this graveyard." Don let go of Jonah and knelt in front of his own tombstone. "A single black ring withstood all the trauma thrown at it and became something wholly different. Energy can be changed, and this was a change no one saw coming. The Entity knew Nekron would unearth it, and that the light would drive away the darkness in the end. It even knew of the battle to come afterward, and drafted soldiers accordingly. But the Entity didn't know that, in the midst of the Blackest Night, a brand-new form of life would be born, unable to do anything but repeat one phrase over and over: 'Don Hall of Earth is at peace."

"It ain't as helpless as all thet. It's done more'n enough tuh me in the past week."

"Now it can, but that first night..." There was a note of sadness in his voice. "The ring no longer had any of Nekron's programming to fall back on, you see, nor any of my memories. The overwhelming aura of true peace had erased nearly all the information that it had once contained, leaving only very basic functions that it didn't know how to access. It couldn't move, it couldn't speak to anyone but the dead, it couldn't fight back when it was passed from one person to the next like the unfeeling object they thought it was." Don looked over his shoulder at Jonah, saying, "Does any of this sound familiar?"

The muscles in Jonah's jaw tightened: he'd experienced a similar nightmare for the last hundred and six years, and he wouldn't wish that Hell on anyone. "Thet's the whole reason behind me comin' back, then? 'Cause Ah could understand whut thet ring was goin' through? Whut's so damned important about thet?"

"Because when you first held this ring, it made a connection with your soul, and it recognized your plight as its own. The ring trusted you from the start, and when the Entity finally felt the ring's presence in the world, it knew you were the best possible choice to safeguard this new life. You could help the ring sort through all these thoughts and emotions it was experiencing - it had found peace, but it had no way of understanding it, not like you do."

Jonah scoffed. "Son, if'n Ah understood a damn thing 'bout peace, Ah wouldn't have spent the last century screamin' inside of muh own corpse."

"The Lord hates a liar!" The voice came from somewhere deep in the woods bordering the cemetery, followed by a gunshot and a child crying out. Jonah's instincts kicked in and, drawing one of his Dragoons, he ran past Don and into the woods, tracking the voice to its source as it yelled, "Ah swear yuh'll stand there 'til those skinny arms snap off or yuh freeze tuh death!" He soon found a small stream cutting through the woods, which had thinned out considerably - just as with the cemetery, this place was bereft of color, as were the people inhabiting it. An eight-year-old boy stood in the middle of the stream, holding a large rock over his head as he trembled, while a rough-looking man sat upon the bank opposite Jonah. "Now, where's muh favorite knife?" the man said. "Yuh know, the one with the deer horn handle?"

The question made Jonah's mind reel as he suddenly recognized the man: his own father, dead for nearly 130 years, but now hale and hearty and tormenting Jonah's younger self once more. The boy pleaded his innocence - just as Jonah recalled doing so long ago - only to endure another bullet whizzing past his head, missing him by inches. Then another person came running towards the stream. "Dammit, Woodson! What are you doing to our son!" Jonah's mother screamed, wading into the water and making her boy put down the rock - she'd passed on long ago as well, but you wouldn't know it by looking at her. The boy fell into his mother's arms, obviously glad for her presence but still trembling as his parents argued. "Woman, yo're underminin' muh authority an' have no understandin' of what point Ah was tryin' tuh make with the boy," his father shouted, gesturing with the gun. "He has tuh learn thet when he's right he cannot bend tuh no other man's will!"

"That wasn't the only thing you learned from your father." Jonah looked over to see Don Hall walking up beside him. "Whether he meant to do so or not, he taught you that all of existence is a matter of balance. You couldn't have expressed this knowledge in words, but your heart and soul knew because you lived through it every day." As Don spoke, Jonah saw sparks of color forming over the gray figures - violet, blue, and indigo for his mother, red, yellow and orange for his father, and a bold swath of green for young Jonah - before the entire scene faded into nothingness. "If not for the counterbalance your mother provided, your father's abuse would have likely killed you long before your willpower had grown strong enough to withstand it. And when you became a man and went out into the world, that ironclad will guided you to do the right thing whenever you felt an imbalance had been created."

"Ah'm still not followin' all of this," Jonah said, his eyes fixed on the spot where his parents had been standing moments ago. Seeing them again like that - even if only an illusion - had jarred him in a way he didn't think possible. "Ah know Ah ain't the smartest fella..."

"You're smart where it counts. You instinctively know that, in order for the world to stay in balance, certain actions must be taken, yet very few people have the will to carry them out. You've devoted your entire life to being the one person who can step forward and do the job. When avarice fills your pockets with bounty money, compassion guides you to help others who have none. The fear you spread amongst outlaws later brings hope to the victims you save from their cruelties. The rage you're capable of burns just as hot and runs just as deep as the love you reserve for those who dare to get close to you. And most important, you know that death is sometimes necessary in order for life to go on, and do not shy away from its role in maintaining the balance...but you refuse to take that last step in your understanding and accept that, in some cases, the balance does not always come out even." Don let out a sigh. "This was a hard lesson for myself as well. It wasn't until after I died myself that I accepted it, and that was how my soul opened up to true peace." He looked at Jonah with an air of pity. "You were always so close to achieving it yourself, but with all the tragedies you'd seen in your life, you still kept fighting to maintain a perfect balance. In your mind, anything less than that would have been like admitting defeat. Even after you died, you refused to stop fighting, and you paid the price for it."

A cold look came to Jonah's eyes. "Whut the Hell is thet supposed tuh mean?"

"There were dozens of times in your life when you should have died, but your ironclad will always kept your heart pumping long enough to survive whatever wounds you suffered. Though it did finally slip long enough for your soul to transition from living to dead, it still retained the strength to keep your soul within your body and deny you the peace you so desired. You expected punishment after you died, so that's what you gave yourself."

"Yo're a goddam liar!" The Dragoon was still in Jonah's hand, and he pointed it directly at Don's head. "Ah didn't want tuh be there, an' Ah would've left thet corpse if'n Ah could!"

"You may have _wanted_ to leave, but you never felt that you _deserved_ to do so. Your own self-hatred, combined with your nearly-unbreakable will, prevented your soul from achieving the proper balance, both in life and death. It's caused you over a century of torment, but now that willpower can be harnessed for a greater purpose." Don reached out his hand, the ring sitting upon his palm, and said, "Please, Mr. Hex, you're the only person who can give this new life what it so desperately needs, and in turn, it will give you what you need."

"Ah ain't gonna let yuh turn me into some rotten puppet again!"

"I swear, you won't be a puppet. You'll be the same as you've always been, but through the ring, your soul will finally know peace. Isn't that what you said you wanted? To be at peace? It's right here in front of you, but you have to accept it."

Jonah stared daggers at the young man, thumbing back the hammer as he prepared to fire a bullet right between Don's eyes. It was all a lie, it had to be. The notion that Jonah was simply too stubborn to let his soul find peace was the biggest load of bull he'd ever heard in his life. God hated him, and God had punished him all through his life and afterward, and now God wanted to trick him into putting on that cussed ring so he could become some undying freak of nature! Well, he wasn't buying it! He was going to shoot this fella in the cockamamie bird costume and tell God to go to Hell!

But Jonah couldn't pull the trigger. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stop looking past the gun and at the expression on Don Hall's face. There was no hint of malice nor deception there, just an absolute air of serenity, and slowly, Jonah's thoughts began to turn to the possibility that there was a grain of truth in all this. "No...no, yuh _are_ a liar!" Jonah yelled, a look of distress coming to his own face. "Yuh'll _never_ let me be at peace! Yuh'll just tease me with it fer a while, then rip it away again! Thet's whut always happens!"

"Only because you refuse to accept that peace is possible for you. If you continue to do that, your soul will never be able to rest," Don explained, and took a step closer to him.

"Stay the Hell away from me!" Jonah could feel the darkness beginning to creep up his back, pulling at him just as it had so many times before. He turned towards it, intent on letting himself get lost in what he'd come to think of as a safe place. But this was the first time he'd ever faced it bodily, as opposed to being merely a lost soul, and therefore he had the eyes to see the darkness for what it truly was: a self-made abyss crafted from every negative emotion ever leveled at him, be it from himself or others. Within its depths, it reflected back upon his soul all the failures - both real and imagined - he'd experienced during his life, reinforcing Jonah's belief that he deserved eternal punishment. What appeared to be a refuge was actually a tomb, he could see that clearly now, and it horrified him that he'd let himself be duped for so long. He tried to back away, but the darkness already had a hold of him, and its grip was as strong as ever. It enveloped him like a shroud and dragged him far away from the gray place he'd stood earlier, and the truth Don Hall had tried to make him face. "_No!_" he cried out. "No, Ah ain't gonna go back in the dark! Ah want out!" Jonah clawed at the darkness until his fingers found purchase, then pulled himself inch by painful inch towards the tiny speck of light that he could just barely make out above him. It had been so long since he'd fought against the darkness that he wasn't sure if he could do so now...and the moment that small doubt entered his mind, he felt the darkness regain its grip upon him. "Let...go...damn yuh!" He focused on the fading light and screamed, "Ah don't want tuh hide in the dark no more! Ah ain't gonna torture muhself fer no good reason! Ah want tuh be at peace! Ah _deserve_ tuh be at peace! _Now let go of me!_"

The darkness shattered, and an intense light poured in, blinding him as he tumbled into God-knows-what. He couldn't see or hear or feel or speak - it was like being in the darkness all over again, only all was white instead of black. Then, after what seemed like ages, he felt something tickling his face, and the light faded down to a reasonable level until he could see that he was laying in a field of sweet-smelling grass. _Green grass_. The greenest green he could ever imagine. He reached out a hand to grab a tuft of it and saw his tanned skin, his white shirtsleeve, the cuff of his red longjohns..._everything _was rendered in glorious hues, with nary an aura in sight. He sat up and looked at the clear blue sky above, staring at it so hard he had to force himself to blink. Then Jonah felt a hand touch his shoulder, and he turned to see a beautiful woman wearing a dress the color of fresh buttermilk sitting beside him in the grass, her long auburn hair cascading across her shoulders. Her face was achingly familiar, but Jonah couldn't place it at first. When it finally came to him, he whispered in disbelief, "Maggie?"

She smiled at him. "Glad you could finally make it."

Jonah smiled back and pulled her into his embrace, losing himself in the scent of her hair, the feel of her body pressed against his, the taste of her lips as they kissed...then he remembered how Jeb Turnbull ripped her heart from her chest, and a wave of guilt crashed over him. "This ain't right," he said, moving away from her. "Yuh shouldn't be happy tuh see me."

"Why not? I've been worried sick about you ever since I dropped you off."

"An' now yo're dead 'cause of me!" He got up and moved even further away, as if distance could solve the problem. "This is _exactly_ whut Ah was tryin' tuh prevent by leavin'!"

"Jonah, you have to stop doing this. You just managed to destroy that pit you'd confined yourself to, so don't start digging a new one." Maggie got up as well and started to approach him, treading the grass with bare feet. "I died because it was my time to die, not because of anything you did or didn't do. It's the same with so many other things you've blamed yourself for over the years, but you don't have to shoulder that burden anymore." She touched the right side of his face, his cheek smooth and unblemished. "Don't you get it yet? Your scars are gone..._all of them_. When you were brought you back, every sin from your old life was forgiven."

Jonah stared at her for a moment, unable to comprehend what she was saying. Forgiveness was the one thing he never dared to ask for, and he'd always figured that receiving it to any degree was just as unattainable as finding peace. But the latter had turned out to be true, though not without struggle, so perhaps this was true as well. He turned his face to the breathtakingly-blue sky above, reveling in the warmth and light that permeated everything around them. Forgiven, he'd been forgiven, every speck of blood upon his hands had been washed away. It was a glorious feeling, better than anything he could have ever imagined. He wanted to bask in it forever...but he knew he had a job to do, and Jonah wasn't one to keep his employer waiting. Looking back down at Maggie, he said, "Reckon this means Ah gotta be leavin' this place, don't it? Cain't watch over the ring if'n Ah'm dead."

"I'm sorry, but that's true," Maggie said. "This black ring isn't like the others anymore: it can still bridge the gap between the living and the dead, but not without a living soul to guide it. Remember how you reached out for my soul when I died? The ring had the _ability_ to do so, but the _power_ came from within you. In your hands, it has the potential to be a peacemaker."

"Where Ah come from, a Peacemaker is a weapon."

"That's true as well, and nobody's denying how dangerous this ring could be, especially since it has a mind of its own...which is why someone has to teach it that there's a time for peace, and a time for war, and how to know the difference." She laid her hand over his heart. "I was wrong before, Jonah. You _do_ deserve a second chance at life, more than anyone, and I think this ring is going to do just as much good for you as you're going to do for it."

"Just so long as it knows who's in charge." Jonah saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and when he turned his head, he wasn't surprised to see Don Hall standing some distance away. Jonah gave him a slight nod before turning back to Maggie and kissing her one last time. "Tell Jeff Ah said thet he's damn lucky tuh have yuh fer his woman," he whispered to her, then began to walk across the field. Don still had his mask off, and a gentle breeze ruffled his blond hair. "Yuh sure y'all don't want tuh do this instead of me?" Jonah asked as he approached the young man. "There's probably lots of folks back home thet'd be glad tuh see yuh up an' about."

"I'm sure." Don held out the ring, a tiny circle of black that seemed out of place in the midst of all this light. "But if you see my brother, tell him I miss our debates."

Jonah grunted, then plucked the ring off of Don's outstretched palm. Closing his eyes, he slipped the ring onto his left hand and waited for...something. Pain, perhaps, or a sensation like when the first black ring took hold of his body. But there was nothing, just this vague weight encircling his finger.

Then he felt a presence, both within and without. It cowered from him, afraid to do or say anything, and it reminded Jonah of himself as a boy, of how he'd occasionally curl up somewhere and weep silently after one of Pa's "lessons". Then he thought of all the times in the past week when he'd hollered at the ring, telling it how he didn't want anything to do with it. _Ah'm sorry_, he called out in his mind. _Ah didn't understand whut was goin' on afore, but Ah do now, an' Ah ain't never gonna treat yuh like thet again. So long as yuh need me, Ah'll be here fer yuh, but Ah expect y'all tuh listen an' follow muh rules in return. We got a deal?_

There was a pause, then Jonah could feel the presence reaching out for him tentatively in his mind, and his left hand went slightly numb as microscopic tendrils of dark matter slipped out of the ring and into his flesh. This latter sensation worried him, but before he could get a handle on what the ring was doing, he suddenly experienced a flood of emotion so powerful it drowned out all thought. He wasn't even aware of his own body anymore, only this overwhelming exultation that permeated his soul and dissolved one hundred and seventy-two years' worth of grief and anger and pain and doubt and self-hatred into nothingness, leaving him as calm and as placid as a lake on a windless day. All the painful memories of his past life and the emotions they brought forth were still there in his mind, but their power over him was gone. A balance had been struck within himself, and he accepted it wholeheartedly.

**[Jonah Hex of Earth is at peace]**, a very small voice said, and as the aura of true peace receded enough for conscious thought to return, Jonah realized that was the ring talking, and he could sense the joy it felt now that Jonah had accepted it, as well as a lingering fear over what they were about to face. _Yuh don't need tuh be scared of 'em_, Jonah silently told it, _they need tuh be scared of us. This here's the time fer war. Understand?_ Though it didn't say so aloud, he knew the ring understood perfectly, and it was waiting for Jonah to tell it what he wanted.

And he did so.

* * *

Boston's eyes kept going to the clock on the diner wall. He'd marked off nearly a minute since the Black Lantern ring had been slipped onto Jonah's finger, and nothing had happened yet. The white nimbus from Boston's own ring still had the bounty hunter in its grasp, but that didn't appear to be making much difference either. "Whatever you're trying to do, it's not working," Boston told the white ring. "Jonah's just getting deader so far as I can tell." He glanced at the clock again - one minute and five seconds - then said, "I want to go outside and find Dove, and I'm prepared to do that _without_ you if you don't..."

Jonah's body suddenly jerked as if a live current was being passed through it, and the white light flared outward, knocking Boston halfway across the diner before dissipating. Holding his head, Boston groaned, "Okay, your objection is duly noted," and sat up. Then he saw that he was no longer dressed in a White Lantern uniform, but his usual Deadman togs...and without the white light to hold them at bay, the Black Lanterns were quickly advancing on the diner. He climbed to his feet, debating whether he should bolt or keep protecting Jonah's body.

A flurry of gunshots rang out, and Boston instinctively threw himself under a nearby table. It wasn't until he was out of the way that he realized the Black Lanterns were the target, not him. Bullets slammed into the eight corpses that had gotten inside so far, each one screaming like mad as they collapsed on the floor, where they continued writhe and moan until their bodies fell to ash. A few more dared to venture in after the first wave, and they were struck down just as swiftly, with the same results. After that, the other Black Lanterns wised up enough to stay outside, and the shooting stopped. Cautiously, Boston poked his head out from underneath the table and looked in the direction the shots came from. A figure was walking towards him through the swirling clouds of ash, a jangle of spurs sounding out with every step.

Jonah Hex emerged from the ashes, alive and well, but somewhat changed. His clothes had a darker cast to them, and his white shirt was the same deep gray as his hat, which now bore silver braid and tassels instead of gold. A black bodysuit was visible beneath his clothes, though it appeared to be more a replacement for his long underwear than a proper uniform. As Jonah put away his ivory-handled Dragoons, Boston saw that he now wore a sleek two-holster rig on his hips, the Black Lantern symbol stamped upon the silver belt buckle. "What happened, Hex? I didn't think you were coming back," Boston said as he got to his feet. Jonah made no sign that he heard the man, instead kneeling down beside one of the still-disintegrating corpses and picking up what remained of the skull. Boston tried again, saying, "You feel okay?"

Jonah closed his hand into a fist, and the blackened skull cracked apart like an eggshell. "Ah never felt more in a mood fer killin' then Ah do now," he answered.

* * *

Hal could hardly believe what Dove told him. In the past week, he hadn't given much thought to why Don Hall - the original Dove - hadn't risen along with all the other people who'd ever died. One less Black Lantern to deal with was fine by him. But now Dove claimed that Don might be working for the Entity from beyond the grave, and that he'd saved her when the Black Lanterns attacked Titans Tower. "You're sure what you saw was actually him? You said that you passed out for a while...it could have been a hallucination."

"At the time, I thought it was. But after hearing his voice a moment ago, I now think he was the presence I felt acting through me during the Blackest Night."

"And now he's going to...what? Act through Jonah Hex? Trust me, Hex isn't going to be a very agreeable partner." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the white light below disappear like someone hit a switch, followed seconds later by rapid gunfire. Hal and Dove ducked down, sure that the Black Lanterns were taking pot-shots at them, but then they heard the Black Lantern that resembled Jeb Turnbull calling out orders to fall back. The gunfire ceased, so the two heroes carefully made their way to the edge of the roof in order to see what was happening - by the time they got there, the gunfire had started up again, mingled with horrific screaming. They looked down to see Jonah wading into the midst of the Black Lanterns, guns blazing incessantly and corpses disintegrating in his wake. Hal was momentarily stunned: the earlier times he'd encountered Jonah Hex, he'd asked the man to show restraint, and Jonah had begrudgingly gone along with it. This was the first time he'd ever seen the bounty hunter unleash his full fury on his targets, going for the kill-shot with every bullet fired, and watching those Black Lanterns scream and collapse made Hal realize just how Jonah had earned his reputation as a mad-dog killer.

As the Black Lanterns continued to retreat from the building, Boston came into view below, sticking close to the diner entrance. The sight of him brought Hal back to reality. "Get down there and make sure he's all right," he said to Dove, then began to lift off the roof.

"Where are you going?" Dove asked him.

"To round up strays." Though his ring couldn't accurately track the location of every Black Lantern, it could at least tell him where the outermost perimeter of them lay, so he set up an emerald shield just outside of the area and slowly drew it inward. From his vantage point high above, the Green Lantern watched some of the corpses flee until they ran into the shield, then claw and bang against it as they were inexorably pushed back into the fray.

Meanwhile, Jonah continued to shoot them down, one by one. A few shot back with their own guns, and multiple arrows were unleashed upon him, though both of these projectiles seemed to become scarce rather quickly, and none of them slowed Hex down in the least: the black ring quickly went to work mending every wound he acquired, just as it had been doing for the past week. Then one Black Lantern dressed in Indian garb ran up behind him and sank a tomahawk into Jonah's left shoulder - the attack caught him by surprise, and the gun in his left hand fell to the ground, where it was kicked out of reach by the other corpses. "Yuh always were a sneaky bastard, Noh-Tante," Jonah said. A split-second later, a tomahawk crafted from dark matter appeared in the bounty hunter's empty hand, and it was soon buried in the Indian's head, rendering him into ash moments later. "Keep it comin', boys! Ain't a one of yuh got the sand tuh take me down!" he roared, then began firing again with his remaining gun.

The cloud of ash grew thicker as more Black Lanterns fell, and soon Hal couldn't make out where Hex was, though he could still hear gunshots and screams, along with the occasional curse word uttered in Jonah's distinct accent. Eventually, all of this ceased, so Hal created a giant green fan to blow away the ash until he could see Jonah Hex wandering about the blacktop, probing at any sizable pile of smoldering remains with the toe of his boot. As he descended, Boston and Dove left the safety of the diner. "Everything okay with you?" Hal asked Boston.

"Yeah. They didn't even give me a second glance once the shooting started." Boston gestured towards Jonah, who was still inspecting bodies. "Not too sure about him, though."

Hal wasn't too sure himself. Despite the reassurance from the Entity or Don Hall or whomever that was speaking to them on the roof, Hal still didn't know what to make of Jonah wielding a Black Lantern ring. He walked towards Jonah, with the others following not far behind, though Jonah didn't seem to pay them any mind. The bounty hunter kicked another pile of ash, and this time something thumped as he passed his boot through it - he bent over to pull out the Dragoon that had been swiped from him earlier. "Always keep track of these," Jonah said under his breath. "Ah know yuh kin make another pair, but Ah like these 'uns." He brushed off some ash that still clung to the weapon, then twirled it into the holster before looking over at Hal and saying, "Thanks fer the assist up there. Saved me from havin' tuh chase 'em all down."

"You're welcome." Hal cocked an eyebrow. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but...were you talking to someone else a moment ago?"

"The conversation's a mite one-way, but yeah." Jonah held up his left hand to show off the black ring, saying, "Don't fret none, it ain't like its cousins we done wiped out." Hal glanced over at Boston and Dove, who seemed just as puzzled, and was about to question Jonah further when a dark look came to the bounty hunter's eyes. "All of yuh, take cover!" Jonah yelled, and he began to turn and draw his weapons again just as gunfire rang out from the shadows.

Hal threw up a shield around them for protection, but not before three of the bullets tore through Jonah's chest. Boston got behind him and broke his fall, then asked, "What's going on? I thought you wiped all the Black Lanterns out."

"Couldn't track him proper." Jonah gritted his teeth as the ring sealed the bullet holes. "Still gettin' the hang of this." They soon spotted Jeb Turnbull coming out of the shadows, the rifle in his hands blasting incessantly at the shield. As Jeb passed by the remains of the fallen Black Lanterns, they turned to ash and swirled about in the air before settling upon him.

"Looks like he found a way to compensate for the low power levels," Hal said to Dove, then looked over at Jonah. "Time to play sharpshooter: I'll open a small portal in the shield, and you stick your gun barrel through and blast him. Sound like a plan?"

Jonah stared hard at Jeb as he continued to advance - he was twenty feet away from the shield and closing, his rifle still sounding out - then Jonah holstered his own guns, saying, "No. Jeb deserves better." He pressed a hand against the shield. "Let me out of this."

"That's not your friend anymore, Hex. That's just his body, same as the others."

"Let. Me. Out." Jonah spat the words, his gaze ice-cold, and Hal opened the shield enough for him to slip out. Jeb's gunfire targeted him immediately, slamming into his chest and arms, skirting the edge of his skull, but the black ring Jonah wore wiped the damage away seconds after it occurred. "Ah ain't gonna fight yuh, Jeb," he said as he walked forward.

"_Oh, so you're a coward now, too?_" Jeb replied. "_Being a traitor wasn't enough? You disgust me, Hex!_"

"There were days when Ah wasn't too happy with muhself, neither. But that's changed now..._Ah've_ changed." He kept walking forward, not even feeling the bullets that tore through his body. "Yuh cain't hurt me no more, Jeb, an' nothin' ever will again, not unless Ah want it."

"_Then I'll kill your stinking Yankee friends, just like I killed your whore!_"

"No, yuh won't." Jonah lunged and grabbed Jeb's rifle with his left hand - one moment it was there, the next it was ash blowing in the wind - then wrapped his right hand around Jeb's throat. "We're gonna end this mess right here, right now."

"_Go ahead, Hex, kill me again. At least this time you won't be able to deny you did it._"

"Ah'm not gonna kill yuh...Ah'm gonna _save _yuh," Jonah said, then pressed his left hand against Jeb's chest, the tips of his fingers digging into the desiccated flesh. Jeb immediately began to howl like a banshee and claw at Jonah's face, but the wounds he inflicted soon healed like all the others. "Come on, dammit," Jonah hissed, his eyes focused on the black ring upon his hand. "Yuh know how tuh do this, we did it afore. Find the thread an' grab on!"

Suddenly, the ring on Jeb's hand shattered, and his dead flesh began to fill out - it was still a lifeless gray, and the eyes cloudy, but otherwise he looked normal. From behind Green Lantern's shield, the others stared in disbelief. "Did Jonah just resurrect him?" Dove asked.

Boston answered, "If so, he did a lousy job."

Jonah let go of his old friend, who was acting rather confused. "_Where...what happened?_" Jeb's voice had the same unearthly quality as before. "_Jonah? Is that really you?_"

"It's me," he said with a nod. "Been a long time."

"_Where have you been? I looked all over the camp for you. I found some others from our regiment, but nobody had seen you since we tried to break out of Fort Charlotte._"

"Whut camp are yuh talkin' 'bout?"

"_That place they took us to after they recaptured us...I don't remember it, but it must've happened. There were lots of Rebs around, and...I think some Yankees were there too, and other people in uniforms I didn't recognize. It was strange. No guards, no walls, just prisoners_." Jeb pressed a hand to his forehead. "_One man tried to convince me that we were in Purgatory, but I didn't believe him._" His voice took on a pleading tone as he asked again, "_Where were you?_"

Jonah swallowed hard, then said, "Ah was in solitary. They kept me there fer so long, Ah went crazy. But they let me out last week, an' they...they let me come fetch yuh."

"_Does that mean the War's over?_"

"Yeah, it's over. Been over fer years. We lost." Tears began to spill down Jonah's cheeks. "Ah'm sorry, Jeb. If'n Ah hadn't surrendered, then they wouldn't have gotten yuh."

Jeb shook his head, saying, "_I never blamed you for that. The others wanted to, but I always knew your morals were too strong for you to betray your friends, no matter how your opinion on the Cause had changed. The rest of us getting captured was just bad luck._"

"Yer father sure as Hell didn't see it thet way."

"_My father is a stubborn sonovabitch, and we both know it_." Jeb smiled, revealing white teeth behind those gray lips. "_And I plan on telling him so if he says one bad word about you when I..._" Jeb paused, the look of confusion returning. "_I don't feel right._"

"It's okay, Jeb. Don't fight it." Jonah put his hands on Jeb's shoulders. "It might be a bit rough fer yuh at first, but it's worth it in the end."

"_But what's...what's..._" His eyes widened, and he jerked his head to the side. "_Mama? Jonah, that's my mother's voice! Can you hear it? She's calling my name!_"

"Then you'd best go find her." Jonah tried to smile, but it was strained. "Goodbye, Jeb."

There was no indication that Jeb heard what he said. "_Mama! Mama, I'm here!_" he cried out. "_I'm right he-_" His body stiffened, then went slack as it turned into a motionless corpse, the bones dry and brittle from spending the past 147 years inside a coffin. Jonah caught the body before it hit the ground, accidentally tearing the dusty Confederate uniform it was dressed in.

Hal had dropped the shield moments before, but none of the three heroes had moved. Now they gathered around Jonah as he sank to his knees, Jeb's body cradled in his arms. "He's at peace," Jonah choked out. "Ah heard the ring say it: 'Jeb Turnbull of Earth is at peace'."

Dove got down on her knees as well, then put her arms around Jonah, trying to impart some measure of comfort to him as he wept.

* * *

While Hal busied himself with contacting the police, Jonah asked to be left alone with Maggie's body so he could make her more presentable, and they honored his wishes. He laid her on the bed in the back of her truck's cab, closed her eyes, then gently wiped the blood off of her hands and face. There was little he could do about the hole in her chest except fold her hands over it. Jonah knew her soul was at peace, just as Jeb's now was, but that didn't make the task any easier, and he found himself shedding tears again when he covered Maggie with the bed sheet. Once he'd finished, Jonah gathered up the tattered remains of his Confederate coat and went to exit the cab. On his way out, he spied the Elvis CD laying on the passenger seat - after a moment's hesitation, he picked it up and slipped it beneath his shirt.

By the time he was done, the police were swarming all over the truck stop. A few glanced his way as he walked across the blacktop, but none approached him, which suited Jonah just fine. He was also glad to see that no one had touched Jeb's body, which he'd wrapped in the blanket from his satchel before taking care of Maggie's. Hal stood some distance away, talking with a lawman, and neither Boston Brand nor Dove were anywhere in sight, so Jonah hunkered down by Jeb to wait. In the back of his mind, he could feel the black ring's presence as it tried to process all the sights and sounds around it. Even after a week of experiences, the world was still a mystery to it, full of wonder and terror. It had an eagerness to learn, but Jonah had no clue how to teach it, save by his own example. He hoped that'd be enough.

After a while, Jonah heard footsteps approaching, and he turned to see the Green Lantern coming his way. "I filled the cops in on what happened. They can finish things up around here," Hal said, hunkering down as well. "You ready to go?"

Hex nodded towards a group of policemen. "They ain't gonna stop us from takin' him?"

"No, I told them the body needed to be disposed of in a special manner."

"Reckon thet's true enough. Whut about our two little fireflies? They stayin' here?"

"Dove and Boston vanished right as the cops pulled up. The Entity must've decided their work was done here." Hal shook his head in disgust. "I really don't like this game it's playing. It keeps moving people around like chess pieces without bothering to explain why."

"Son, thet's whut life is. Ain't nobody supposed tuh _like_ it, just deal with it." Jonah picked up his satchel, then slipped his arms beneath the body. Hal tried to help, but Jonah brushed him off with, "This is muh burden. Yuh just concern yerself with drivin' the hearse."

Encased in an emerald sphere once more, Jonah directed Hal to go northwest. Traveling over miles of desert in minutes, they soon came within sight of Monument Valley and the charred remains of Illumination, along with the cemetery situated a few miles outside of it. "This'll do," Jonah said, and they touched down in front of the rusty iron archway that marked the cemetery's entrance. "If'n yuh feel so inclined, he told Hal, "yuh kin fill in them other graves while Ah take care of Jeb's."

Hal agreed, and they worked in silence, each one focused on their respective grim task. As Hal used his ring to fix up the rest of the cemetery, he took note of the inscriptions upon the headstones: the names meant nothing to him, but he saw that many of the bodies originally laid to rest here died on the same date in 1863, and they were all men who belonged to the same cavalry regiment as Jonah. Thanks to a book about Hex he'd acquired after their last meeting, Hal knew about the Fort Charlotte Massacre, which had claimed the lives of three dozen men, including Jeb Turnbull. Hal also knew the incident didn't occur anywhere near Monument Valley and, at the time, the Turnbull family was based in Virginia. So why were the graves located here? What reason could there be for interring so many bodies so far from where they'd fallen? He was tempted to ask Jonah, but now wasn't the right time. They'd come here to bury the past, not dig it up again.

Dawn was breaking proper by the time Hal finished his share of the work. He made his way over to Jonah, who was down on one knee next to a still-open grave, his back to Hal as he worked on the marker. Jeb's own grave was beside him, the headstone set right and the dirt packed down firmly, and Jonah had also taken the time to repair the grave of Quentin Turnbull, though perhaps not with as much care. As he approached, Jonah got up and moved aside, letting Hal get a good look at the simple wooden cross he'd erected, and the words carved upon it:

**JONAH WOODSON HEX**

**1838-1904**

**REST IN PEACE**

Hal was taken aback, his eyes going from the inscription to the unfilled hole in the ground. "You're not planning on climbing in there, are you?"

"Not exactly." Jonah picked up his satchel and dropped it into the grave, followed by his old Confederate coat. "Of all the things thet gnawed at me when Ah was dead, this was the most vexin'," he explained, grabbing a shovel that lay nearby. "Damn-near everybody who's ever lived gets a proper burial, but Ah never did, so Ah decided tuh rectify the situation." He scooped up a shovelful of dirt and tossed it in. Hal soon joined him, using his ring to craft a shovel of his own. Silence fell between them again as they slowly but surely filled in the shallow grave. When the last clump of dirt had been piled on, Jonah slapped the flat of the shovel against it. "There...don't know why nobody could do thet fer me afore," he muttered, then looked at Hal. "Yuh probably think Ah'm nuts fer doin' this, don't yuh?"

"Not a bit. Seems appropriate, actually." He leaned on his shovel. "You're leaving behind your old life for a new one, and you need to create some kind of break-off point."

Jonah took off his hat and wiped sweat from his brow, saying, "Ain't gave much thought yet tuh whut thet life's gonna be. Probably ain't much call fer bounty hunters no more, whut with all yuh fellas in longjohns runnin' about...an' Ah ain't got no desire tuh join yer Corps neither, so don't even go suggestin' it. Muh soldierin' days are over."

"It was furthest thing from my mind. Matter of fact, I suggest you keep that black ring out of sight. There's too many people out there who'd love to crack it open and figure out how it works, especially if they knew it could think for itself." Hal looked towards Illumination, or what was left of it. "Your friend's descendant was just the tip of the iceberg. I heard Lex Luthor's been trying to get hold of some Black Lantern remains for study, and I hate to think of what a man like him would do with a functional black ring." He let the shovel in his hands vanish back into his own ring and said, "Come on, I'll take you back to my apartment. We'll discuss this more after we get some rest." As he began to construct a new sphere to carry them away, Hal noticed Jonah was walking away, his eyes fixed on the eastern sky. "You see something out there?" Hal asked, coming up behind him.

Jonah didn't answer at first, he was too busy taking in the glorious sight before him. He could see the red-orange glow of the rising sun, its colors spilling across the towering sandstone pillars that gave Monument Valley its name. A grin coming to his face, Jonah finally replied, "Looks like it's gonna be a beautiful day."

_**NEXT ISSUE: New storyarc, new characters, and "The New Normal"!**_


	11. The New Normal

**THE NEW NORMAL**

It had only been a dream. A bizarre dream brought on by a vicious head wound and copious amounts of Indian medicine, but a dream nonetheless. Jonah had to keep reminding himself of that fact, even as he stood there dressed in his Confederate uniform once more and readying his horse for the long ride to come. He couldn't get over how vivid it had all been: visions of himself as an old man, bleeding to death on a saloon floor, followed by one maddening tableau after another. He'd even seen Jeb, and spoken at length with him, impossible as that was - Jeb Turnbull was long dead, and corpses couldn't speak. Despite knowing that everything he'd witnessed wasn't real, Jonah couldn't shake the uneasy feeling it gave him.

**[Fear]**, a very small voice said.

Jonah's back stiffened at the words. He turned away from his horse and looked about, but all he saw was Tallulah and Bat, along with the Indian medicine man who'd nursed him back to health. Jonah knew none of them had spoken - the voice had sounded almost childlike - yet no one else was there. He dismissed it as some lingering remnant of his dream and turned back to his horse to saddle up. Bat was already on his mount, and he soon rode away from the group with a wave of his hat and a grin on his face. Jonah watched him go, thinking about how nothing ever seemed capable of souring Bat Lash's disposition.

**[Hope].**

That voice again, whispering in his ear, or so it seemed. He almost asked Tallulah if she'd heard it, but he held his tongue. Unaware that anything was amiss, Tallulah flirted with him in her usual manner, which eased some of the tension Jonah felt. She was a special gal, that Tallulah, and while there had been many women over the years that he'd shared his life with, none of them ever understood him the way Tallulah did.

**[Love]**, the voice said now, almost sighing.

Jonah closed his eyes and gave his head a shake. Who kept talking? Where were they hiding? He looked up in time to see Tallulah riding off, leaving him alone with the medicine man. Was the voice coming from him, like some Indian hoodoo? No, Jonah knew that wasn't it, though the real answer still eluded him. As he took up the reins, Jonah asked the Indian if he needed anything before departing.

"I have all I need here, Jonah Hex," the Indian replied solemnly. "Wherever you ride, may you find peace."

**[Jonah Hex of Earth is at peace]**. The voice had taken on an insistent tone, as if upset that the medicine man suggested otherwise. It was also a little louder, which helped Jonah pinpoint the source: a strange black ring adorning his left hand. Puzzled, he lifted his hand and stared at it, thinking, _Where'd this come from? An' how in blazes kin it talk?_

The questions had barely formed in his mind when Jonah was distracted by a loud banging, like a series of gunshots. Without thinking, he yanked on the reins, which caused his horse to rear up, and he soon found himself tumbling out of the saddle and into a gray mist. It wrapped around him tightly, pinning his arms to his side as he fell down and down and...

Jonah let out a grunt when he hit the floor, missing the coffee table by inches. Untangling himself from the blanket, he sat up and leaned against the couch that had been serving as his bed. It took him a moment to recall where he was, namely Hal's apartment in Coast City. They'd arrived there not long after dawn, and the last thing Jonah could remember was Hal turning on the television and flipping through the images so fast Jonah's eyes couldn't keep up. _Must've dozed off_, he thought, rubbing a hand over the right side of his face. _Wonder how long?_ He glanced over at the window and noted that the sun was rather high, so it certainly wasn't a catnap. However long it was, he certainly felt rested. In fact, it was probably the best he'd felt since this whole craziness started a week ago - not having nightmares about being dead helped in that respect. _Still a mite strange, though, dreamin' about the old days like they was right now. Reckon me bein' at peace doesn't mean Ah cain't miss whut's long gone._

The banging he'd heard earlier resumed, and this time he recognized it as someone knocking on the front door. Jonah stood up and walked over to the door, instinctively reaching for one of his guns - he'd fallen asleep fully dressed, right down to his gunbelts. There was a peephole in the door, so he held the gun at chest level as he looked through it to see a rather attractive dark-haired woman standing on the other side.

**[Love!]**

Jonah jerked back from the peephole and looked at the black ring upon his finger. "Whut did yuh just say?"

**[Love]**, the ring repeated, and Jonah realized all the color was leaching out of his vision, rendering everything around him in blacks and whites and grays, just as the ring had done when trapped inside his heart. Figuring that it was trying to show him something, he looked through the peephole again and saw that the woman was now bathed from head to foot in an intense violet light, especially over the ring she herself wore. The violet took on a flicker of red as the woman shouted at the door, "There's no point in hiding, Hal! I know you're in there!"

"I'm coming, hold on a minute," Hal called out from the bathroom. He emerged moments later, wearing only a pair of jeans and drying his hair with a towel. "I couldn't hear you with the water..." Hal stopped when he spotted Jonah standing there with his gun still pointed at the door. "What're you doing?" he hissed at the gunfighter.

"She's got a ring...a violet one. Wasn't sure if'n she was trouble or not."

"It's just Carol, she's fine. Now put that away!" Hal pushed past him to open the door.

"Like Ah know who's trouble an' who ain't," Jonah muttered, flipping the gun back into the holster. To his surprise, the whole rig then vanished, turning both Dragoons into a swirl of gray ash that was quickly swallowed by the black ring - his vision returned to normal around the same time. "Whose side are yuh on?" he asked the ring.

**[Compassion]**, it replied.

"Sorry, Carol," Hal said as he let her in. "I forgot that I was supposed meet up with you. Something unexpected happened."

"Something unexpected _always_ happens with you." She gave him a cold look. "It was silly of me to think that, with all this business of finding the other entities, you might try harder to be punctual for a change." She then caught sight of Jonah. "Oh. I didn't realize..."

"Don't worry, he knows all about it. Carol Ferris, this is Jonah Hex."

Jonah gave her a nod and hooked his thumbs under his belt, which caused her to notice what was on his left hand. Looking somewhat concerned, she asked Hal, "Is he wearing what I think he's wearing?"

"Yeah, that's the 'unexpected' thing that happened...and don't worry, we're safe. He's not going to go all Black Lantern on us," Hal said. "You had breakfast yet?"

"It's almost one in the afternoon."

"Then you can call it lunch." He turned to Jonah. "Bacon and eggs sound good to you?"

"Toss in some coffee an' yuh got a deal," he replied.

"Sure thing. It should all be ready by the time you get out of the shower." When he caught sight of the blank look on Jonah's face, Hal said, "You _were_ going to take a shower, right?" Still no reaction. "_Please_ take a shower? For the sake of all those downwind?"

A noise somewhere between a growl and a curse came out of Jonah's throat as he headed for the bathroom, slamming the door hard behind him to emphasize just how much he was against Hal's suggestion. "He seems charming," Carol said. "Now, who the heck is he, and why is he sporting a black ring?"

"God, where to start?" Hal walked into the bedroom, tossing the towel aside and grabbing a black t-shirt out of the closet. "First off, he's not from this time: he was originally a bounty hunter in the late-1800s, so if he seems a bit out-of-sorts to you, that's why."

"I take it this is going to involve time travel?"

"Yep." He pulled on the shirt as he headed for the kitchen, saying, "I've run into him twice before. First time was twelve years ago, on a JLA mission. We got thrown back to 1878, I got messed up pretty bad, and he saved my life. That's the super-short version." Hal began to rummage through the fridge, piling some turkey bacon and a carton of Egg Beaters on the counter. "Our second meeting was five years ago, just a few days after my rebirth. A lab explosion threw me _forward_ this time, to the year 2050, and to my surprise, I found Hex there as well. Seems some future despot with a time machine had grabbed him months before, but he'd escaped and was struggling to deal with that crazy world." Cookware clattered as Hal now dug a couple of frying pans out of the cupboard. "That time around, I saved him, and in the end, we both found our way back to our respective eras."

"And now he's been...what, tossed forward again and into your lap?" Carol leaned against the counter. "That doesn't really explain the ring, though."

Hal had been pouring the Egg Beaters into one of the pans, and he paused to look at her. "I did mention Hex was originally from the late-1800s, right? As in, he was _alive_ back then?"

"You mean...wait a minute, this can't be right." Carol's brow furrowed. "You're saying he died a hundred-odd years ago, got resurrected last week as a Black Lantern, then came back to life...how? The Entity only brought back twelve people, and he wasn't one of them."

"The Entity only let us _know_ about twelve people. Hex is like some kind of a side project. The way he tells it, that black ring on his finger got cut off from Nekron's commands and became sentient, so the Entity picked _him_ of all people to safeguard it and teach it about life. Something about Hex understanding the balance between life and death better than anyone else."

"So...I guess he's part of our team now?"

"Absolutely not." He poked at the bacon with a spatula. "If the idea is for Hex to keep that ring safe, then having him tag along with us is the exact opposite idea. We both agreed that the best thing is for him to keep a low profile. I do want to take him out for a while today, though, and give him a crash course in ring-slinging."

"And then what? Is he supposed to hide in this apartment while you and I go off hunting emotional entities? That doesn't seem too fair to him, especially if he's been dead for as long as you're implying. I would imagine he'd like to get out and see what's new in the world."

"You don't know Jonah like I do. He's not the sociable type." Nodding towards the living room, Hal said, "If you look on the coffee table, you'll see a book I picked up not long after my last run-in with him. It'll give you a better idea of the sort of guy he is."

Carol got the book and brought it back into the kitchen. "I can't believe this," she said, looking at the cover, which bore a sepia-toned photograph of Hex from long ago.

"Yeah, I know. If you think that scar looks bad in the picture, you should've seen it in person. He's lucky the Entity thought enough to erase it."

"Not that," she replied. "I can't believe you actually own a book."

He mock-threatened her with the spatula, saying, "I'm not above giving you 'the Aunt Jemima treatment', so watch it."

Carol flipped through the book, examining pages here and there. "You're right," she said, "he doesn't look like the kind of guy that'll ease right into modern society." She looked up at Hal. "Have you called the League about him? Maybe they could keep an eye on him until he's better acclimated."

"Oh yeah, Hex would _love_ that: lock him up in JLA headquarters for a few weeks or months or however long it takes for him to adjust. Somebody would most likely end up dead by the end of that stint."

"And leaving him here alone is a better idea?"

Hal sighed and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "Okay, I don't know what to do with him. I got thrown a curveball and it beaned me right between the eyes. Is that what you want me to say?"

"No, I'm just trying to figure out why you're so unwilling to ask for help. You're acting like Jonah Hex is all your problem and yours alone. I understand you two have a history..."

"That's just it: we have a history. Hex sought me out because he doesn't know anyone else in this time. I'm the only person he trusts, and even that only goes so far." He sighed again. "With Hank and Arthur and many of the others, reintegrating them back into society was easier because they'd only been gone a few years. They still had friends and loved ones around. Who does Hex have? Me. That's it. I know from experience how hard it is to rebuild a life, even when you _do_ have people to support you, so I'm not about to turn him over to strangers."

"But you're already stretched thin as it is," Carol replied. "There has to be somebody else who can take up some of the burden." She thought for a moment, then said, "What about contacting the Justice Society? Some of the older members have been around since the 1930s...at least Jonah might be able to relate to them better."

"Maybe. I don't know," Hal said, then a look of realization came to his face. "Wait a minute...God, I'm an idiot!" He shoved the spatula at Carol, saying, "Keep an eye on breakfast, I've got some calls to make."

* * *

The entire bathroom was filling with steam by the time Jonah got the water how he wanted it. Bathtubs were more common than showers in his time, but he'd seen them before, so it didn't take long for him to get the whole works going. Normally, he loathed bathing, but once the pulsating stream of water hit his body, he stood beneath it for a few minutes, reveling in how good it felt - just because the concept of a massaging shower head was foreign to him didn't mean he couldn't appreciate the results. When it came time to find something to clean up with, however, he began to winkle his nose in distaste: there was nary a bar of soap in sight, and all the bottles in the shower were filled with strong-smelling gunk. Picking the one that offended him the least, Jonah squeezed the contents of the bottle into his hand and lathered up, thinking, _Why anybody would want tuh smell like this is beyond me._ Thankfully, the stink lessened once he rinsed off and exited the shower, but another surprise came when he grabbed a towel and realized _that_ had a flowery smell also. _Christ, do they dump perfume on everything these days?_

**[Rage?]**

"Whut're yuh goin' on about?" He stopped drying off and looked at the ring. "Ah know yuh kin talk in normal sentences, Ah've hard yuh do it afore. So quit this one-word stuff."

Silence at first, though Jonah could feel the ring was struggling with something. Then it spat out **[JonahHexofEarthisatpeace]** in one quick burst, followed by a meek **[Fear...avarice]**.

"Yuh cain't say any more than thet, but yuh want tuh. Is thet it?"

**[Hope! Compassion!]** The words came out bright and cheery.

"Reckon we'll have tuh work on it. Least yuh kin understand whut _Ah'm_ sayin'." He finished drying off, pausing occasionally to look at himself...or rather, to look at places on himself that used to bear scars. He'd been doing that in the shower as well, and he imagined it would be a good long while before he got used to seeing smooth, unblemished skin where there had once been bullet holes or burn marks. Jonah had already acquired a habit of touching the right side of his face whenever he woke up, for in his dreams, that particular scar lingered on, and he had to constantly remind himself it no longer existed. That was something from his old life he was glad to be rid of.

As he bent over to pick up his jeans off of the floor, Jonah felt something cool begin to slide over his skin. "We're doin this again, eh?" he said, looking at the black bodysuit that was forming around him - the ring had whisked it away as he'd removed his clothing earlier. It reminded Jonah of the one that Green Lantern wore, but this didn't cover his feet or hands, instead ending just above his ankles and wrists respectively. "Still don't see the dif'rence between this an' regular longjohns," Jonah muttered, "but if'n yuh think it's better..." He put on his clothes right over the bodysuit, for he harbored no intentions of running about in his underwear like so many others appeared to be doing these days.

The mouth-watering smell of breakfast greeted Jonah as he opened the bathroom door. Walking through the living room, he passed Hal, who was talking on the telephone to someone - when he saw Jonah, he immediately lowered his voice. It struck Jonah as odd, but he was more interested in food at the moment, so he kept on going into the kitchen, where he saw Carol pouring a cup of coffee. "Be much obliged if'n yuh poured me one as well," he said.

"You can take this one...hasn't been touched." She slid the cup over and began filling another for herself. "You need some sugar or anything?"

"No, ma'am." He took a sip, then made a face. "This don't taste right."

"It's decaf," she answered. "You probably have no idea what that is, do you?"

"Aside from awful, no." Jonah glanced around the kitchen, saying, "Where's thet sugar? Maybe it'll help cover up the taste."

Carol grabbed a cylindrical container next to the coffee machine and began to measure out a spoonful. "It's not that bad once you get used to it. It's better for you, too."

"Ah'm alive again after bein' dead fer a hunnert years. Hard tuh get much better'n thet." He held out the cup so she could stir it in, took another sip, then held it out again so she could put in more. "Reckon Hal filled yuh in on me, right?"

"The broad strokes." She smiled as she added a double helping. "Welcome to the 21st Century, home of decaf coffee and artificial sweeteners." She tapped the spoon on the lip of the cup. "Give that a shot. It's how I take mine."

"Better," he said after sampling it. "Thank yuh kindly, ma'am."

"You can call me Carol...or Ms. Ferris, if it makes you more comfortable."

"It does." Jonah cocked his head slightly, saying under his breath, "Whut now? Whut are yuh..." He then turned to Carol. "Ah think it's tryin' tuh say it likes yuh."

"_What_ likes me?" she asked before taking a drink of her own coffee.

"The ring." He held up his left hand and explained, "It ain't got a firm grasp of English yet, so thet's why it keeps sayin' 'love' an' 'hope' over an' over."

"I can't hear anything."

"Yuh cain't?"

"No, sorry." She went to the stove to check on the food. "It's not all that surprising: the rings are telepathic to a degree, that's how they can make constructs from our thoughts." She turned off the burners, then said, "I suppose yours only talks directly into your mind."

"This explains a lot." Jonah slumped against the counter, staring into his coffee cup. "The dang thing was talkin' tuh me even while Ah was _asleep_."

Carol suppressed a laugh. "If it makes you feel better, I've had a conversation or two with my own ring. I know it must be strange to you right now, but you'll get used to it."

"Like decaf coffee," he muttered, then a new thought came to him. "How many people are walkin' around with fancy rings, anyhow? Ah've only been alive a week, an' Ah already know 'bout four of 'em, countin' muhself."

"You want on Earth, or the whole universe?" Hal asked, coming into the kitchen to place the phone back in its charger.

"Forget it, Ah think the number might be too big fer muh brain," Jonah answered.

Carol had begun to split the bacon and eggs between two plates, and Hal came over to finish up. "Everything good?" she asked him.

"Perfect. Thanks for the suggestion." He gave her a peck on the cheek.

"Whut's goin' on?" Jonah asked. "Ah'm referrin' tuh the conversation, not the kissin'."

"You'll find out later. First, let's eat." Hal laid the plates and silverware on the small table in the dining alcove. Jonah settled into a chair and dug right in, while Hal turned to Carol and asked, "You want me to fry up some more for you?"

"I'm not hungry. Besides, I've got places to be." She set her mug upon the counter, saying, "Which is what I wanted to meet you about this morning, but you never showed."

"And again, I'm sorry, so just tell me now."

"I picked up the trail of one of the entities," Carol said. "The Predator's in Las Vegas."

"Great." Hal's ring began to spark to life. "We'll fly out there and..."

"No, _I'll_ fly out there. You've got other things to take care of, remember? And I don't just mean Hex." She crossed her arms over her chest. "I was already planning on taking this solo. I just wanted to touch base with you, see if you'd had any more leads of your own."

Hal frowned. "I don't like this. The Predator's played with your head before. You might need me if he tries anything like that again."

"I'm not some damsel in distress anymore, Hal. I can take care of myself."

"I didn't say you were, I just..." His expression softened. "Promise me you'll be careful, and that you'll call if you need backup. That's all I ask."

"I promise." She started to walk out of the kitchen, pausing a moment next to Jonah. "Love and hope," she told him, smiling.

"Yuh ain't so bad yerself," he replied, a ghost of a smile playing across his own features.

Hal watched this exchange with puzzlement. After Carol left the apartment, he asked Jonah, "Mind telling me what that was about?"

"Me an' yer girlfriend spent some time gettin' acquainted."

"She's not my girlfriend."

"Thet ain't the way it looks from here."

"Okay, we _used_ to be an item, but not anymore." Hal sat down at the table. "We're just friends now."

"Uh-huh." Then Jonah said under his breath, "The man's in denial. Leave him be."

Hal wasn't sure he wanted to know what _that _was about.

* * *

After eating, Hal donned his Green Lantern uniform and flew southeast with Jonah to the arid plains of Arizona. He'd explained about wanting to give the gunfighter a few pointers, and it seemed best to do it in a relatively isolated area. "Not to say that you don't know how to fight," Hal said as they landed, "but this is a new weapon for you, one that can do a lot more than generate bullets for your guns."

"Ah know about thet whole 'construct' business, if'n thet's whut yuh mean." Jonah held out his hand and, after a moment, a tomahawk crafted from dark matter appeared in it. He tossed the newly-fashioned weapon into the air and caught it, saying, "See? Easy as pie."

"Okay, but what if someone was throwing that at you? Can you make a shield?" Hal stepped back until he was about twenty feet away. "Come on, throw it right at my head." Jonah did as Hal asked, throwing the tomahawk with all his might. It sailed through the air, only to collide with a wall of emerald light that appeared out of nowhere. "This is the sort of thing I'm talking about," the Green Lantern told him. "You no longer have to depend merely on what's at hand. Weapons, equipment, transportation, even simple things like ducking for cover during a firefight...the ring provides you with limitless possibilities."

"An' thet's the purpose of this little trip? Seein' how fast Ah kin figure it out?"

"Exactly. We're going to spar a bit. Nothing dangerous, just some knocking about...and no guns, either. Show me how creative you are." Hal took to the air, then stopped about twelve feet up when he realized Jonah was still on the ground. "Hmm...suppose I should give you a flying lesson first."

"Nothin' doin'. Ah'm keepin' both feet on the ground. Yuh won't see me limpin' around in the air like a ruptured duck."

"See, this is what I was afraid of: you're limiting yourself to what you know from the past. That's just idiotic." He dipped down a few feet and held out his hand, saying, "We'll start out in tandem, then once you're comfortable..."

Jonah grabbed Hal's hand and pulled hard, dropping himself to the ground as he did so. Taken unawares, Hal crashed to the desert floor, and the gunfighter soon had him pinned. "How's thet fer creative?" Jonah asked with a grin.

Hal answered by making a giant green hand to push Jonah off of him, then tightened that hand into a fist to hold him in place. "You're still thinking old-school," Hal said. "The ring allows you to operate at a distance with just as much finesse. Instead of physically pulling me out of the air, you could have easily used the ring to grab and hold me, just like this."

"Fine, Ah get yer point," Jonah growled. "Now let me outta this so's Ah kin make a fist of muh own an' belt yuh with it."

"No way, poozer. You're going to have to think of a way out of this."

Jonah didn't know what "poozer" meant, but it sounded like an insult. Growling again, he tried to pry apart the "fingers" holding him, but it was no use, his arms are pinned against his sides. _Think of something, dammit!_ he silently yelled at himself. _Make a crowbar, or..._

**[Will!] **the ring cried out.** [Will will will!]** As it spoke, Jonah felt the black bodysuit wrap tighter around him, the dark matter seeping directly into his limbs to bolster his strength. _So thet's the idea behind this_, he thought. _It ain't longjohns, it's yer way of protectin' me._ He flexed his arms, and this time, the construct holding him began to loosen its grip. _Keep it comin', son...a little further..._ Jonah could feel his body reverting to a dead state from all the dark matter being dumped into his system, yet still he wasn't completely free of the construct. He let out a howl of pain and frustration as a pulse of dark matter erupted from within himself, ripping the construct apart. Then he collapsed on the ground as his body slowly returned to normal.

"My God, Hex, are you all right?" Hal said, running over to him. "I didn't expect..."

Jonah made a fist with his ring hand and jabbed it in Hal's direction. As he did so, a steam train composed of dark matter sprang into being, its whistle blaring angrily as it chugged straight at the Green Lantern. Hal managed to dodge it, but only by inches, and his proximity to it allowed Hal to see how intricately detailed the construct was before it dissipated. "There, Ah made something," Jonah gasped, pushing himself up to a sitting position. "Happy now?"

"Actually, yeah...not to say that I enjoyed having a train thrown at me."

"Yuh riled me up. Do it again, an' Ah'll toss in the boxcars an' caboose, too."

"How could I rile you up? What happened to 'being at peace'?"

Jonah looked up at him. "Yuh ever shake up a compass?" When Hal didn't answer right away, he elaborated, "It's a thing thet looks like a pocket watch, tells yuh which way's north."

"I know what a compass is. What's your point?"

"When yuh shake one up, the needle spins around all crazy fer a while, then it starts tuh settle down 'til it's pointin' north again, straight an' true. Thet's whut bein' at peace is like: when something comes along an' shakes yuh up emotionally, there's still a part of yuh thet stays in balance, an' when things calm down, it pulls yuh back in line with it." Jonah held up a finger and wiggled it back and forth, saying, "Muh needle's just 'bout back tuh true north again, so now Ah ain't got no desire tuh throw a train at yuh. Five minutes ago was a dif'rent story."

"And that was _you_ getting angry, not the ring? Or was it both of you?"

"Tell the truth, it kept yellin' 'compassion' at me, like it was tryin' tuh talk me out of it. But Ah'm the one in charge, so Ah made the decision." Hex stood up and knocked dirt off of his trousers. "So...yuh up fer a second round?"

"Forget it, I don't want you chucking anything else at me. How about you just follow my lead, and try to replicate what I come up with? We'll start with something simple..."

The two men spent the next hour producing one construct after another of varying shapes and sizes. Hal was amazed at Jonah's eye for detail, though the Green Lantern did find one blind spot: when it came to many of the contraptions invented after Jonah's death, the man had difficulty replicating them. If Hal made a construct of the object first, Jonah could produce a rough copy, but with no frame of reference in front of him, the gunfighter quickly became lost. Even something like an automobile - of which Jonah had seen more than his fair share over the past week - came out looking more like a box with four wheels stuck on it than a real vehicle. After his eighth failed attempt, Jonah bent over, put his hands on his knees, and groaned, "Thet's it...gotta rest a spell...recharge."

"How can you recharge?" Hal asked. "You don't have a lantern." He was then struck by an appalling thought. "That ring's not asking you to kill people now, is it?"

"The Hell's wrong with yuh? Of course it ain't!" Jonah tapped a finger against his breastbone. "Everything it needs, it draws from right here. All this constructin' has just overtaxed me, is all. Ain't used tuh this kind of exertion yet."

"In that case, maybe you _should_ stick with only generating bullets, or at least limit how much energy you use at one time." Hal fell silent for a moment, then said, "I don't know about you, but this idea of the ring drawing power from within you instead of an external source worries me. What would happen if it tried to draw too much?"

"Don't know. Reckon thet's something we'll have tuh work on along with everything else." Jonah straightened up, taking a deep breath and blowing it out slowly. "Okay, Ah'm feelin' better. Whut do yuh want me tuh whip up now?"

"I think we've gone over just about everything possible. You've got the basics down cold, which is remarkable considering how short a time you've had the ring. There's just one thing you haven't done yet." Hal took to the air once more, then looked down at Jonah. "You may not like the idea, but I want you to try it, just so I can see how you handle yourself."

"Ah told yuh afore, Ah ain't doin' it. No way, no how, an' thet's final."

"Remember that phone call I made this morning? If you want to find out what it was about, then you're gonna have to fly, because I'm not carrying you anymore." With that, Hal turned in midair and flew off. It was a mean thing to do, but he knew how stubborn Hex could be - goading the man like this was sometimes the only way to get results. Hal started off slow in order to give Jonah time to get airborne, and when he looked back, what he saw took him by surprise: instead of flying, the gunfighter was riding a dark-matter horse, galloping along effortlessly at speeds no living horse could ever match.

As he overtook Hal, Jonah looked over his shoulder at him and shouted, "Ah wasn't fond of yuh carryin' me, anyhow."

Hal shook his head, then poured on some more speed in order to lead the way.

* * *

The duo soon came upon a ranch nestled in a secluded valley, with mesas looming in the distance. The main house was a sprawling adobe building, gleaming white in the midday sun. A wrought-iron archway marked the road leading up to the house, and as Jonah passed beneath the arch, he noticed the outline of a guitar had been worked into its design.

"Well? What do you think?" Hal asked, setting down onto the road beside Jonah.

"Real nice," he replied. "Whut're we doin' here? Sight-seein'?"

"Not exactly. Come on." Hal began to walk towards the house, his Green Lantern uniform transforming back into civilian garb as he did so. Jonah dismounted, then let the dark matter making up his steed flow back into the ring before following. When they got within sight of the front door, a slim woman in her mid-40s stepped out onto the portico and waved to them.

"Hello! You must be Hal Jordan," she said, shaking his hand. "I'm Helen, Greg's wife. He should be along in a moment." Then she turned to Jonah. "It's nice to finally meet you, Mr. Hex. I have to say, the pictures Greg showed me don't do you any justice."

"Ma'am?" Jonah had taken off his hat out of politeness, but now he found himself clutching it to his chest with a slight amount of fear and confusion. Who was this woman, and what was she talking about? Then the front door opened again, and the sight of the man who came out just added to his confusion, especially when he trotted right up and threw his arms around the gunfighter, laughing all the while.

"Hex, you crazy ol' sonovagun!" the man said. "By God, just look at you! Dead a hundred years, and you come back with a face like one of those Abercrombie & Fitch models! How'd you get so lucky?"

Jonah glanced over at Hal and the woman, neither of whom seemed very forthcoming with information, so he blurted out, "Pardon muh sayin' so, but who the Hell are yuh?"

The man looked genuinely shocked. "You don't remember? I know I look a mite younger myself, but...hold on a sec." He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a red bandana, and held it over his face so it covered his nose and mouth. "How 'bout now? Ring any bells?"

All the color drained out of Jonah's face. "Saunders? But thet's...yuh cain't be..."

The man sometimes known as the Vigilante dropped the bandana and grinned like a little kid. "Guess you don't remember me tellin' you 'bout how I was really from the future."

"Kinda." He paused for a moment, thinking hard. "We got drunk one night an' swapped time-travelin' stories, didn't we?"

"That's right. And just like you, I finally found my way back home. Good thing for you, too, seein' as how you need somebody to help you get acclimated to this time period." Greg clapped Jonah on the shoulder. "Don't you worry. Me and Helen talked it over, and you're welcome to stay here at _Casa de Saunders_ for as long as you like."

"This is whut yer telephone call was about?" Jonah asked Hal. "Yuh was tryin' tuh find someone tuh take me in?"

"Not initially," Hal replied. "I thought perhaps Greg could come up to Coast City for a while, but he suggested you come down here instead since he has such a big place. It does make more sense: I'm sometimes off-planet for days or weeks at a time. If an emergency cropped up, I'd be too far out of reach."

Greg added, "Besides, you ain't exactly the city-dwellin' type. Down here's gonna be more your speed. Fresh air, lots of open spaces. It'll help you ease into this new century."

"Ah reckon yo're right, but Ah just..." Jonah looked over at Helen. "It don't seem proper, imposin' on yer home like this. Yuh don't even know me."

"Greg knows you, so that's good enough for me," she said, "although I hope he exaggerated how bad your temper is."

"Ah've calmed down a touch."

"Then it's settled. Now..." Greg jerked a thumb towards the house. "You ready for the other surprise?"

Jonah was wary of what it might be, but he did his best to relax as Greg and his wife led the way into the house, Hal walking beside him. They passed through the living room and down the hall until they reached Greg's study. The spacious room was decorated with mementos from his life - both as a musician and masked hero - with an oak bar and pool table set up on one side of the room. Across from there sat two men in plush leather chairs, one of whom stood when Greg and the others entered. "Welcome back, Hex," the man said, walking up to shake his hand. "I'll admit, I was surprised to hear that you'd turned up alive and well, but then again, you always were good at cheating death."

As when he first saw Greg, Jonah couldn't fathom who this person was. He stared at the man's weathered face and short white hair, but nothing came to mind. Jonah then peeked around him at the other man, who'd remained seated. That gentleman was of an indeterminate age, his most striking feature being his tailored black clothes - admittedly, the eagle-headed cane leaning next to his chair made Jonah think of Quentin Turnbull, but that was most certainly _not_ who he was looking at. The gentleman must've caught Jonah's bewildered expression, for he said in a British accent, "Not to quash the festivities, but I believe some reintroductions may be in order."

Jonah nodded, saying quietly, "Ah've got these blank spots in muh memory. Don't really notice 'em 'til things like this come up. Ah'm sorry."

The white-haired man's eyebrows shot up. "Did you just apologize for something? Are you sure you're really Jonah Hex?" In a gentler tone, he continued, "It's okay, you've been gone a long time. You used to know me as Windrunner, but I go by Max Mercury these days. We only had a few run-ins - pardon the pun - so it's understandable if I slipped your mind."

"The name's vaguely familiar, but thet's about it. Maybe something will come tuh me later." Jonah began to approach the gentleman in the chair, then stopped as he got a sense of apprehension from the ring. "Ah don't know who yuh are, but something ain't right about yuh."

"An observation many others have made over the years," he replied with a sly smile. "Both now and in times past, I'm known as the Shade. We met once, and briefly, when you came to Opal City to visit our mutual friend Brian Savage." The shadows around the man seemed to stir of their own volition as he said, "He returned to us for a while as well, not so long ago, before departing again."

Incredulous, Jonah asked, "How many others from back then are still alive?"

Greg answered, "That knew you personally? Just two more...least that's all we could think of. I tried to get a hold of Carter and Shiera - you knew 'em as Nighthawk and Cinnamon, Hex - but they weren't picking up the phone. I think those lovebirds are still too busy nesting. We'll arrange a visit with them as soon as we can."

The gunfighter's gaze went from one person to the next as he tried to take it all in. He'd spent the past week resigning himself to the notion that everything from his past was gone, unreachable, and now, in the space of a few minutes, he'd learned that wasn't completely true. He had friends, this Jonah Hex. Ones that were willing to open their home to him in a time of need. Ones that didn't care about his mind wiping out nearly every trace of them. Considering how many decades Jonah had spent pushing away anyone who tried to get close to him, he found it remarkable that they could look past his previous attitude and welcome him with open arms.

"You doing okay, Jonah?" Hal asked. "Did your compass get shook up again?"

"Ah think the needle done broke off this time." He then said with a grin, "Reckon maybe it'll settle back into place once Saunders gets his lazy ass behind thet bar an' pours me a drink."

"_That's_ the Jonah Hex I know!" Max said with a laugh, and the others soon joined in, Jonah included. It wasn't long before they all took seats around the study and began to reminisce about the old days, as well as filling Jonah in on what he'd missed during the interim.

After a while, the black ring - which had been rather quiet since their arrival at the Saunders ranch - decided to chime in with its opinion of their new situation: **[Hope]**.

Jonah couldn't have agreed more.

_**NEXT ISSUE: We learn why "Old Soldiers Never Die"!**_


	12. Old Soldiers Never Die

**OLD SOLDIERS NEVER DIE**

_**2010:**_

"They don't ever change, do they?"

Greg stopped strumming his guitar and looked over at Jonah. "What's that?"

"The stars." The two men, along with Helen, were sitting out on the tiled patio behind the house, the others having departed hours before. Hal left first, due to an alert signal from his ring - something about a "Larfleeze" pilfering from folks in Minnesota - then the Shade, and finally Max, who promised to come a-runnin' should Hex ever call. Afterward, Greg and his wife treated their new houseguest to a fine supper _al fresco_, grilling steaks so big Jonah wasn't sure he could polish his off. Perhaps it was the satisfactorily-full belly this meal gave him, or maybe the copious amounts of alcohol he'd imbibed since arriving at their home, but as night fell over Arizona, Jonah found himself in a reflective mood. "Yuh kin go a hunnert years in either direction, an' the stars always look the same," he said. "Even when Ah was trapped inside muh corpse, Ah'd sometimes get a glimpse of the night sky, an'...it helped. Seein' something familiar."

"I've had the same experience more'n once," Greg replied, then turned to Helen with a grin. "Been a few years since I needed those kind of reassurances, though."

Helen, who was stretched out on a chaise lounge next to him, reached over and poked Greg in the ribs with her finger. "My mother warned me about sweet-talkers like you."

His grin turned into a comical leer as he plucked out the beginning of "My Mama Done Tol' Me" on the guitar, and they both laughed. Jonah didn't know the song, but he let out a soft chuckle at their antics. Though Jonah had only just met Helen, the love she and Greg shared was plain for him to see, and Jonah could only hope that, somewhere down the line in this new life of his, he'd be lucky enough to find someone just as perfect for him as they were for each other (again, he chalked up such thoughts to the good food and booze).

After exchanging a few more playful barbs - along with a few kisses - Helen got up and stretched, saying, "I don't know about you boys, but I'm thinking it's about time to turn in for the night. Got a buyer showing up bright and early tomorrow to pick up that Cruz installation." She caught the slight look of puzzlement on Jonah's face and explained, "I own an art gallery in town. Mainly local stuff."

"As well as her own," Greg added. "She does great work. Did you see that painting in my study, over near the bar? That's hers. One of my favorites, too."

"Greg..." It was too dark to see Helen blush, but she put a hand over her face anyways.

"It is! Why do you think I bought it?" He said to Jonah, "There was this charity auction three years back, and that painting was one of the things up on the block. I ended up in a bidding war with this gal 'cause she got cold feet and didn't want nobody else to own it."

Jonah cocked an eyebrow. "Yuh tried tuh buy back yer own stuff?"

"It's not like the money wasn't for a good cause," Helen replied, dropping her hand. "But yes, I tried to buy it back. Even after he won it, I went over and offered to buy it from him, or at least let me touch it up before he took it home, but he refused."

Greg smirked and said, "That's how we met."

"And to this day, he _still_ won't let me touch it up." She waggled a finger at him, saying, "When you die again, I'm gonna haul it into my studio soon as the funeral's over!"

"Nope, sorry, it's going in the coffin with me!" He started laughing, which was soon punctuated by cries of "Ow, quit it!" as Helen went over and pinched him repeatedly. Greg then dropped the guitar, pulled her into his lap, and gave her a good long kiss until all was forgiven.

While Jonah found the horseplay amusing, something Helen said struck him as odd. "Whut do yuh mean 'bout him dyin' _again_?" he asked.

Greg, who was still holding Helen tight, let out a sigh. The two of them looked at each other silently for a moment, then she said, "Maybe you should have this conversation later."

"No, it's okay," Greg told her, followed by a quick peck. "You go on to bed, I'll be along soon." As she slid off his lap, he took hold of her hand and gave it a squeeze. "Love you."

"Love you too." She nodded to Jonah and said goodnight before heading inside.

After she was gone, Greg picked up his guitar and began strumming again, the notes echoing through the crisp night air. It was obvious that the man was stalling, so after nearly three minutes had passed, Jonah said, "Tell me, Saunders: does _anybody _stay dead these days?"

"Lots of people do," he replied. "Just maybe not the right ones." He looked over at Jonah with a sad smile. "I kinda expected you to ask me 'bout this sooner, or at least a side-effect of it." He ran a hand through his dark hair, saying, "I know your memory's a mite spotty, so maybe you missed the fact that I don't look as old as I did last time we saw each other."

"Ah didn't miss it, Ah just ain't got much room tuh talk on thet point." Jonah waved his own hand towards the right side of his face, which no longer bore the scars he'd been cursed with for most of his life. "Did yuh take the same route as me gettin' here?"

"You mean dyin' in the past and gettin' resurrected in the present? Naw, I got home through proper time-travel: the JLA and JSA got together and rooted out where I was, then sent some folks to pick me up." Greg wrinkled his nose slightly. "Damn Thunderbolt done got the dates wrong, though, that's why I hung out with y'all for so long back then."

"So yuh got back home, an' _then_ yuh died."

"Quit rushin' me, Hex." He started to pick out a new tune on the guitar. "You wanna hear this, you let me tell it at my own pace."

**[Fear]**, Jonah head the black ring whisper in his ear. _Thet much is certain_, he silently answered.

"Reckon I was a lot like you are now when I got back," Greg said after a time. "I'd skipped ahead a few decades, so I kinda had to relearn how the world worked. Still, I tried to get back into my old routine like nothing had changed - singin' songs by day, bustin' heads at night - but it weren't as easy now. I was creepin' up on sixty, and a body just can't do the same things then as it can at twenty or thirty."

"Thet's gospel truth there," Hex muttered.

"So after a couple of years of foolin' myself, I retired. Hooked up with a gal named Sally, who I knew from way back when - she was a widow now, but still a fine filly - and did my best to enjoy all them royalties that'd accumulated while I was gone." The notes coming from the guitar were bright and cheery as he spoke. "Sure, I'd strap on my sixguns and bandana from time to time, but for the most part, I decided to leave the adventurin' to the younger set. Even kept mum when one fella after another took on my name without askin'. Figured if you can have two or three Green Lanterns or Flashes or what-have-you, then an extra Vigilante won't hurt none. It was a good retirement, I enjoyed every minute of it. Maybe a mite too much, goin' by how my waistline expanded." He smiled. "Sally was a great cook, and a wonderful gal all-around. When she got sick..."

Greg stopped playing, pressing his palm against the strings to silence them. He stared out at the moonlit landscape for a while, then said, "After she passed on, I didn't know what to do with myself. I'd been back for close to ten years by then, and the older I got, the more I kept clingin' to the past." He turned to Jonah. "I suspect that'll be your biggest problem: tryin' to decide what from your old life you should let go of and what to hold on to."

Jonah nodded. "Hal's already pegged me on thet once or twice."

"Well, don't be like me and fool yourself into thinkin' you can relieve your glory days when you're collectin' Social Security. I'd gotten a notion in my head 'bout havin' a rematch with this monster I'd faced down not long after I got to the Old West. A buffalo spider, the Indians called it...a ghost animal. Big, ugly, and dangerous is what I called it. The thing was trompin' around Arizona same as it had a century or so back, and there I was, old enough to fart dust but makin' plans to kill it with a bunch of greenhorn heroes along for the ride." He shook his head, saying, "Damn fool, that's what I was. Didn't even bother to call up the other Soldiers and ask for their help. Not that there's many left, mind you, but still..."

"Yuh were fixin' tuh die, weren't yuh?"

"Reckon I was. Had you asked me point-blank then, I would've denied it, maybe spun a yarn 'bout wantin' to give the up-and-comers some tutelage. All I really did was set us up for a slaughter like Custer at Little Big Horn. The buffalo spider was just a lure, y'see, set loose by the Sheeda...and don't ask me what they were, you don't want to know." Greg moved the guitar aside, then pressed a fist against his breastbone, as if taking hold of something there. "I remember being speared from behind right before everything went dark. After that, it all becomes a jumble." His brow furrowed slightly. "I think I might've talked to someone, or someone talked to me, but...I don't know. It's been five years, and I haven't exactly tried real hard to keep those particular memories fresh, y'know?"

"So thet was the end fer yuh," Jonah said once Greg fell silent again. "Not a nice one, but Ah reckon folks like us don't get nice endings."

"Damn right," Greg replied. "There's always lots of blood and pain and, if we're lucky, we save some innocent people. No dyin' in our sleep of old age for us," he said with a sigh. "They tell me the funeral was nice. Pat broke down cryin' in the middle of the service...hard to imagine a big fella like that gettin' weepy, but that's what I heard. I left instructions in my will to be buried next to Sally, and they honored that. 'Course, that only lasted 'bout a week." Greg started to play another tune, this one lower in register than before, full of dark notes. "More often than not, when someone comes back from the dead, magic's involved. Hell, you could even think of them Black Lantern rings as magic of a sort. For me, it was no dif'rent: someone worked up a bit of hoodoo to drag me back to the land of the livin'. Only in my case, it wasn't done with the best of intentions."

* * *

_**2005:**_

"What's taking you so long?" The Dummy was pacing beside the open grave, casting angry looks at the two thugs down below. They were tossing up one shovelful of dirt after another, sweat beading on their faces. "You've been at this for hours, and I _still_ don't see the coffin!"

"We're goin' as fast as we can, boss," one of the thugs gasped. "This isn't easy to do with just shovels."

"Yeah," the other added, "I think they use backhoes or something these days."

"No excuses!" The pintsized criminal swung his cane and bonked one of them on the head. "Work faster, or else I'll see to it you join that meddling cowboy down there!"

One of them thrust his shovel into the earth and was greeted by a hollow _thud_. "Hey, I think we've got it!" The work did indeed go faster now as they scraped the dirt away from the edges of the coffin, searching for the pins that held the lid in place. It took a while to break them off, but once they fell away, the coffin pried open easily, exposing its contents.

"There you are," the Dummy breathed, then snapped at the thugs, "Lower me down!" One of them climbed out of the grave, scooped his boss up like he was a child, and handed him to the thug still in the hole. "Yessir, this has been a long time coming," the Dummy said as he knelt upon the still chest of Greg Saunders, then cupped his tiny hands around his enemy's face. "All those times you thought you killed me, but I always came back, didn't I? Yessir, I did. And now you're going to do the same." He cackled in Greg's face, "I'm going to enjoy making you suffer for all eternity! Yessir!" Jerking his head up, he yelled at the thug above, "Get the tarp, Rand! We're gonna gift-wrap this singing stiff!"

"Sure thing, boss." Rand disappeared, while the other thug remained in the hole, watching his employer giggle and slap the former Vigilante's cold cheeks. "What exactly are you gonna do with him?" he dared to ask the Dummy.

"Bitter irony, Boyce, that's what I'm going to do! From now on, the Dummy will be the one pulling the strings! Yessir, I will!" He turned to the thug with a mad gleam in his eyes. "And if it works as well as I hope, maybe I'll do the same with you!"

Boyce gulped, and felt a wave of relief when he saw Rand coming back - they both knew the boss was a bit of a nut, but the way he was talking now was too much. After helping the Dummy out of the grave, Boyce took hold of Greg's body and began to lift it up until Rand could get a hold of it as well. Between the two of them, they managed to roll the body onto the tarp, where Rand proceeded to wrap it up, securing the gruesome bundle with lengths of rope.

As Boyce climbed out of the grave, the Dummy ordered him, "Start filling it back in, and make sure you do a proper job of it! I don't want anyone to suspect that anything's amiss." He twirled his cane as he began to walk to the vehicle, saying, "These are going to be private performances, just for me...and perhaps if I'm feeling saucy later on, we'll take him on the road. Wouldn't that be a treat for his Soldier buddies? Ha-ha!"

* * *

_**2010:**_

"Guess yuh remember more'n yuh were lettin' on," Jonah interrupted.

"What do you mean?"

"Yuh know exactly whut happened, even though yuh were dead. Sounds like yuh ended up like me: trapped in yer corpse an' aware of everything, but unable tuh do anything about it."

"That's not it at all," Greg replied, shaking his head. "I didn't hang around like you did, my soul had moved on. I wasn't there for any of that."

"Then how come yuh know whut this Dummy fella an' the others were sayin' an' doin'? Or is this all just elaboration on yer part?"

"I know because...look, will you let me finish? You have no idea how hard this is for me to talk about, and I really don't want to do it twice."

"Fine, keep jabberin'." Jonah settled back in his chair. "Ain't got nowhere tuh be."

It took Greg a moment to get started again. "Boyce and Rand put my body in the back of the van, where the Dummy was waiting. He kept gigglin' and pokin' me with his cane during the whole ride, goin' on 'bout what he was gonna have me do. His favorite idea involved making me cut my own fingers off, one knuckle at a time, then sewin' them back on so I could do it again. 'Or maybe I'll make you eat 'em instead! Yessir, that's a fine idea!' he'd say." Whenever Greg repeated the Dummy's words, his voice took on a manic edge, to the point where he didn't sound like himself anymore. "We drove to a small airport, and from there, we boarded a plane that took us to Louisiana. The Dummy had made arrangements in advance, y'see, but the fella refused to leave his home base, so I had to be carted to him. The Dummy felt the extra trouble was worth it, though, since he'd heard the fella did quality work."

A shiver ran through Greg, and he said, "Yep, real quality work."

* * *

_**2005:**_

Papa Vipere was waiting for them in his inner sanctum, a high-ceilinged room permeated by the smell of incense. A stone altar dominated the center of the room, and that was where Vipere directed the Dummy's men to set the body, still secured inside the tarp. "I presume you have brought me payment as well?" Vipere said in a thick Creole accent.

"Exactly what you asked for," the Dummy replied, and produced a thick envelope, which one of Papa Vipere's servants took from him. The servant was African-American, same as Vipere, but his dark skin had an ashen cast to it, and his eyes were glassy, unfocused.

"You state at Andre," Viepre said. "Do you not like what you see?"

"No sir, I like it very much. Your works stands up to your reputation. I've just...I've never actually seen one before."

"Andre was one of my first. In life, he displeased me." The voodoo priest reached over and patted his servant upon the head, like one would do with a dog. "He has improved much."

"That's the sort of result I'm hoping for." The Dummy gestured towards the body, saying to his men, "Open it up."

Boyce and Rand untied the ropes and let the tarp fall open, then quickly stepped aside as Papa Vipere approached. He examined the body carefully, probing his fingers over the cold flesh, moving the limbs, and eventually ripping open Greg's shirt to expose his chest. A brief look of distaste came across Vipere's features, then he said, "Do you not recall what I told you, _Monsieur_ Dummy, regarding the condition of the body?"

"Of course I do: the fresher the body, the better the work. I would've been here sooner with it, but the Vigilante's friends had him under lock and key the whole time."

"Not just fresh, _Monsieur_. I need a body that is unsullied." He pulled the shirt open further, revealing a long autopsy scar. "This body has been dissected and tainted by chemicals. In order to achieve the results you want, this will require significantly more work."

"Then do it!" the Dummy snapped. "I was deprived of the opportunity to kill the Vigilante, so I want the next best thing: to torture his soul until his body rots away to nothing! You claimed you could bring him back from the dead and make him obedient to me, so do it!"

"I can do it, and very well," Papa Vipere told him, "but not for the paltry amount we agreed upon. That was for an unsullied body, untouched by the hands of coroners or morticians. To resurrect this offal, I will have to expend more resources than that money will cover."

"We had a deal, Vipere!"

"A deal with conditions, which you did not meet." He stepped away from the altar and over to the Dummy, towering over the little man. "If you truly wish to make your enemy suffer as you've described, you will give me thrice the original amount we agreed upon. I will gladly hold the body here until you produce it."

The Dummy's face reddened as he yelled, "I'm not going you pay you another thin dime, you backsliding..."

* * *

_**2010:**_

Greg paused, then said, "He called Vipere the 'n-word'."

"The Hell does thet mean?"

"There's certain words you can't say to certain people nowadays without gettin' in a lot of hot water. Reckon sayin' 'em back in your day was second nature, but if you say 'em now, you might as well be wearin' a white hood and burnin' a cross. And for black folks, the 'n-word' is the absolute worst thing a white man can say to them, hands down."

Jonah thought about this for a moment. "Negro?"

"No, the other one...but you shouldn't say 'Negro' either."

"Any other words Ah shouldn't say no more?"

"I'll make you a list later." Greg shifted in his chair. "So, with that tidbit in mind, how do you think a big black guy would react to a little white guy calling him such?"

The black ring came up with the answer before Jonah could voice it: **[Rage]**.

* * *

_**2005:**_

Papa Vipere's hand shot out and wrapped around the Dummy's throat. "Your attitude displeases me," he said, lifting the man off his feet. "It's not wise to displease me."

Though Boyce and Rand's opinion of their boss wasn't the highest, they were loyal enough to come to his aid. "You'd better drop him, right now!" Rand said as he and Boyce drew pistols out from beneath their coats.

Vipere turned towards them, and to their horror, the voodoo priest's dark countenance twisted from human to that of an fanged serpent, which hissed at them, "If you value your pathetic souls, you will leave this place and never return." The two men immediately forgot what little loyalty they had and ran for the door, abandoning their former employer to his fate. "As for you, _Monsieur_ Dummy," Vipere said, regarding the small man dangling in his scaly grip, "I believe I have thought of a compromise. You do not wish to pay me any more money, and I do not wish to waste any more of my resources...so instead, I shall waive the extra payment and take the resources from you personally." His clawed fingers tightened around the Dummy's windpipe as he began to chant in guttural tones. The Dummy let out a strangled cry and did his best to twist free, but he soon found his limbs unwilling to obey him, and not long after, he felt his flesh become soft and runny, like warm candle wax - even his insides were sliding about of their own volition.

"You want to control your enemy, as if he were the puppet you named yourself after," Vipere mused as he carried the Dummy over to Greg's still form. "I shall grant you the means...but only if you can overcome the strength of your enemy's soul." With his free hand, Vipere propped open Greg's mouth, then held the Dummy's now-featureless body above it so that the melted flesh could drip down the dead man's gullet. The effects were immediate: the pale, cold body regained a flush of vitality, the autopsy scars disappeared, his silvery hair turned black once more. By the time the last dregs of what had once been the Dummy passed his lips, Greg Saunders looked to be in the prime of his life again, lean and fit and ready for action. His eyes snapped open as he gulped down air, the shock of resurrection taking hold.

"Whuh...where'd...God..." Confused, Greg tried to sit up, unaware that he was laying on a narrow stone altar - he leaned too far to one side and tumbled off, the tarp still wrapped around his legs. As he kicked loose, he spotted Papa Vipere, who had regained his human form. "What's goin' on?" Greg asked, just before his head suddenly jerked back, as if he was having a convulsion. "_Let me out of here, Vipere!_ _This isn't what I wanted!_" The voice was the Dummy's, but it came from Greg's mouth.

"And I do not care," Vipere answered. "You are a small, petty man, and I will not do the bidding of such men. I gave you what you wanted, but on my terms. Your life and the Vigilante's are now one and the same. Whichever one of you has the stronger will, the greater desire to live, shall rule the other." He grinned, revealing pointed teeth. "Personally, I hope it is a very long battle."

The Dummy let out a curse and lunged at Vipere, but fell short: his control over Greg's body was already slipping away, and the cowboy took over mid-leap. Landing at the voodoo priest's feet, Greg looked up and gasped, "Please...whatever you did, you have to undo it. I can feel him...he's crawling around inside of me...screaming in my ears..." Greg screamed himself as another convulsion rocked his body, followed by the Dummy making a grab for Vipere's ankles, spitting out racial epithets all the while. Seconds later, Greg tamped down upon his unwanted occupant, an effort that left him too exhausted to move. He tried again to ask Vipere to reverse whatever hideous spell he'd cast, but it was taking everything he had just to keep the Dummy bottled up.

"Remove him," Vipere ordered, snapping his fingers at Andre and another servant. The zombified men shuffled forward and took hold of Greg, whose body twitched as the two souls contained within clashed endlessly. "I wish you luck, _Monsieur_ Vigilante," Vipere said as they carried the body past him, "but not too much." His laughter echoed throughout the room, even as the heavy doors to his inner sanctum slammed shut.

* * *

_**2010:**_

"I got dumped in an alley in the French Quarter. Cops found me a few hours later." Greg's voice was low and even as he spoke. "They thought I was strung out on something, so I ended up in the hospital. Lucky for me, the cops ran my prints, and that sent an alert to the Oracle." Noting the look of confusion Jonah was giving him, Greg said, "It's an information system for the superhero community. Don't know who put it together, but it's wired into every damn thing out there. Anyways, when they tried to look up my prints, the Oracle lit up and sent word to the JSA, but it was too late to help me out. My body couldn't handle two minds pullin' it in opposite directions, y'see, so everything started shuttin' down. By the time my friends got to the hospital, I was in a coma, and nobody knew why, much less how I'd come back to life in the first place." He leaned back and closed his eyes, the guitar in his lap forgotten. "Me and the Dummy spent a year fightin' non-stop inside my head, each of us tryin' to dominate the other for more than a few seconds. Had our fisticuffs been physical, I could've mopped the floor with the crazy half-pint, but soul versus soul...his hatred smothered me in the end. One moment I was Greg Saunders, the next I was nothin', just a collection of memories that the Dummy could rifle through like a book. He was the one who opened my eyes after a year of bein' hooked up to machines, and he knew just what to say to my friends in order to make them think everything was peachy-keen."

Jonah didn't like what the man was implying. Cracking the knuckles on his ring hand, he asked, "An' is this Dummy fella the one who's a-sittin' afore me right now?"

Greg looked over at Jonah in surprise, then said, "Good Lord, Hex, what's goin' on in _your_ head? Do you think I'm gonna jump up now and stab you with a steak knife?"

"Yuh tell me Greg Saunders became nothin', an' thet the Dummy's walkin' around wearin' his skin...whut in blazes am Ah _supposed_ tuh think?"

"I think you should wait until I'm done with the story before you beat the snot outta me. Can you do that?" He stayed silent until Jonah settled back in his chair, then told him, "Reckon I should've phrased it better, considerin' how you went through some similar grief recently, but trust me when I say that I'm all me right now. Back then, however, was a dif'rent story. The Dummy knew how to play it cool, and he pulled the wool over everybody's eyes for the first couple of months. Then he got bored playin' at bein' me and decided to go back to what he knew best: killin' people." Greg drew in a deep breath. "He went after my old partner first. Stuff was all grown up now and had a family, so the Dummy dropped by their house all casual-like and..." Another deep breath, followed by putting a hand over his eyes, as if to shield them from a horror only he could see. "He didn't even wait for their bodies to grow cold before headin' to his next target, and that's what did him in: Stuff was still hangin' on by a thread, and the moment the Dummy was out of sight, he crawled to a phone and called Pat. With his last dyin' breath, he warned him 'bout who was really hidin' behind my face, 'cause the Dummy had been stupid enough to brag about it. For a little man, he always had a tremendous ego. Thank God for that."

* * *

_**2006:**_

The front window of the Dugan household shattered as the tuxedo-clad man flew backwards through it. He landed on the lawn, then sprang to his feet, paying no mind to the tiny shards of glass sticking out of his hands and face - any damage Greg's body took just delighted the Dummy more. "_You're a very naughty girl_," he said, grinning wildly. "_As soon as I find your mother, I'm going to tell her what you did._"

"You're not gonna get anywhere near her, you body-snatching freak!" Stargirl soared out of the house, her cosmic rod lighting up the night. She pointed it at the Dummy and tried to ensnare him within its energy field, but he dodged easily, taking advantage of the Vigilante's quick reflexes. That didn't help him much when a full-grown horse with wings suddenly dropped down into his path.

"Stand down his instant!" the Shining Knight roared, brandishing his sword directly in the Dummy's borrowed face. "I know not what allowed thee to take possession of our comrade-in-arms, but I will not stand by and let thee make a mockery of all he stood for!"

The Dummy continued to grin, even as he raised his arms above his head. He then flicked his wrist slightly, and a knife sprang out from beneath his sleeve and into his hand, which he deftly used to slice at the knight's mount. Despite Winged Victory's magical properties, it was still a horse, and it screamed and bucked as the blade cut into its hide. Sir Justin managed to stay in the saddle, but in doing so, his attention slipped away from his quarry.

"He's rabbiting, Pat!" Stargirl shouted over her comlink as she fired energy bolts at the Dummy, who was running into the street.

"Not for long," Pat Dugan replied, and she soon heard the familiar roar of S.T.R.I.P.E.'s maneuvering thrusters overhead. The robotic fighting suit landed right in front of the Dummy, and Pat called out from within, "That's far enough, pal. Drop your weapons and lay face-down on the ground."

"_And what will you do to me if I don't? Squash me like a bug?_" The Dummy began to laugh manically as he looked at the three heroes surrounding him. "_None of you can dare to lay a finger on me, not so long as you think there's a chance of getting your beloved Vigilante back! Yessir, I've got the ultimate hostage right here!_" With a flourish, he twirled the knife in his fingers, then held it to his - or more accurately, Greg's - throat. "_Go ahead, try and grab it away. Let's see who's faster than your cowboy friend, hmm?_" He pressed the edge of the blade into the skin, just enough to draw a few drops of blood, but no one moved. "_No takers? Such a shame. Looks like the only Soldiers left alive are the cowardly ones. Yessir, a real shame._" Not moving the knife from his throat, the Dummy began to step away from them, but before he could get far, he noticed a thick red mist swirling around his feet. "_What's this? Trying to use knockout gas on me?_" he said, then he saw a figure walking towards him out of the mist: a young woman wearing a red blindfold, a long leather coat, and a white shirt with a large bloodstain over her heart. In her hands were a pair of Colt automatics, both of which were pointed directly at the Dummy. "_Aha, one brave soul! What's your plan, then? Try to shoot the knife out of my hand and hope you don't blow the Vigilante's brains out?_"

"No," the Crimson Avenger replied, followed by her guns sounding out over and over. An endless barrage of bullets slammed into Greg Saunders' body, yet they left no marks. Instead, the supernatural ammunition penetrated all the way down to the Dummy's soul, ripping through the bonds that kept him tethered to Greg. Falling to his knees, the Dummy let out a howl as the red mist now poured out of Greg's mouth, carrying away every remnant of the villain and leaving the body's rightful inhabitant intact.

"Vig!" Pat shouted as he climbed out of S.T.R.I.P.E. and ran over to his now-limp form. Stargirl and the Sir Justin were already there, with the knight kneeling down to gently cradle his old friend in his arms - the Crimson Avenger had already vanished back into the mists, her work complete. "Is he okay, Justin? Is he breathing?" Pat asked.

"Aye, he breathes, his heart beats...but 'tis the state of his mind which concerns me."

And with good reason: Greg's eyes were open, but they were unfocused, lifeless. Then the spark of consciousness slowly returned to his brain after being suppressed for so long, and he became aware of everything the Dummy had done while in possession of his body. A pained expression came to his face, and he pushed away from Sir Justin to curl up in the middle of the street, hands tearing at his hair and choked sobs coming from his throat.

* * *

_**2010:**_

Greg fell silent, his tale having finally reached its end. The two men sat there quietly for a time, then Greg asked Jonah, "So...nothin' to say now?"

"Whut's there tuh say? Yo're all in one piece again, yuh got a fine wife, yo're young..."

"Well, youngish. I reckon I'm on the good side of forty now."

Jonah waved a hand in dismissal. "Point bein', so long as there ain't a chance of thet sonovabitch takin' yuh over again, Ah cain't think of much tuh say."

"No, the Dummy's long gone. I've had every mystically-inclined person I know check me out six ways to Sunday, and they've all reassured me that my soul's clean, while his is most likely rotting in Hell." Greg got up from his chair and walked to the edge of the patio, looking out at the dark Arizona landscape. "All of his memories are still lingerin' in the back of my head, though, just like mine lingered in his when he took over. They've been gettin' fainter as time goes on, but I don't think they'll ever go away completely."

"Yuh got muh sympathies on thet," Jonah said, thinking about the images forced into his own head during his time under Nekron's control. "Still an' all, seems like yuh recovered pretty damn well from thet nightmare. Most folks probably would've ate a bullet rather'n go on livin' with thet sort of stuff burned into their brain."

"Oh, I almost did. Got good and liquored up one night, then sat down in the front room with my Peacemaker in my lap. Thank the Lord I forgot to turn off the TV beforehand, 'cause just as I was gettin' ready to do the deed, the local news came on, and they started talkin' 'bout how the sheriff over in Warpath had been murdered in public by gangbangers. Got me thinkin' of how my Pa died, and all of the sudden, I began to feel like a selfish little bastard. Soon as the report ended, I went into the bathroom and made myself puke up a whole bottle of Jack. Didn't completely avoid the hangover the next day, mind you, but it took enough of the edge off that I could make some serious decisions 'bout my life."

"Yuh mean like lettin' them Warpath folks pin thet badge on yuh?" Jonah shook his head, saying, "If'n there's anything dumber in this world than these newfangled fellas thet run around in masks, it's a fella like yerself thet takes off the mask but keeps on doin' the same job. It's a wonder yuh ain't been killed again yet."

"That's exactly why I ain't been," Greg replied. "I'd gone public with my identity years ago, and when I became sheriff, I used that to my advantage. The bad guys already know my reputation, and that I'm not gonna drop as easily as the other lawmen they'd rubbed out. Sure, they've tried, and I've got a few new scars to prove it, but I've put away more of them since I took office than my predecessors did in the past decade. I'm makin' a big dif'rence in people's lives here, as well as my own." He turned to look at Jonah, saying, "Wouldn't mind a little extra help with that, neither."

"Yo're joshin', right? No way in Hell am Ah gonna let yuh or nobody else hang a tin-star target on me."

"I'm not talkin' about you bein' a proper lawman. This would be more like...freelance work. Lendin' me a hand on some of the rougher cases." He hooked his thumbs under his belt and said, "Had a setup like this with another fella for a while, but he preferred to keep it all off the books. Kinda restricted what I could use him for. Then some damn reporter from back East came around lookin' for him, made him nervous. He got afraid someone else might sniff out his trail as well, so he pulled up stakes. I decided afterwards that, if I ever did this sort of deal again, everything would be aboveboard. You'd be licensed with the state, and would have to adhere to the law, no goin' off and bustin' heads without my say-so." Greg cocked an eyebrow. "Any of this soundin' agreeable to you?"

Jonah shifted in his chair, looking rather uncomfortable under his friend's gaze. "Don't know if'n Ah kin handle whut yo're askin' of me. Ah'm still tryin' tuh wrap muh head 'round this," he said, holding up his left hand to indicate the black ring he now wore, "an' this here job yuh got in mind fer me...reckon Ah'd be goin' up against the sort of craziness y'all was talkin' 'bout a while ago, wouldn't Ah? Like hunnert-year-old spider monsters an' men whut kin rip a fella's soul outta his body. Mind yuh, Ah've seen some wild stuff in muh day, but that don't mean Ah enjoyed it. An' facin' things like thet on a regular basis just don't sound appealin'."

"It won't all be monsters and madmen. Sometimes it won't be much dif'rent than collectin' bounties like you used to. Other times...yeah, it'll be crazy stuff, but the world's full of crazy stuff these days. And with you totin' that ring around, you'll most likely attractin' a bit of it to yourself, sorry to say."

"Ah' thet's the other thing. Ah've been tasked with keepin' this ring safe, so it seems tuh me like Ah should _avoid_ thet sort of stuff." Jonah shook his head, saying, "Forget it, Saunders. Nice of y'all tuh offer me the job, but Ah cain't be takin' risks like thet no more."

"Then what are you plannin' to do with the rest of your life? Work at the Taco Whiz downtown?" Greg sat back down again, pulling his chair closer to Jonah's. "Look, I'm not gonna pretend that I understand this whole 'bein' at peace' thing you've got goin' on now, but I do reckon that it's changed you quite a bit, and not just your face. So maybe you pickin' up a gun again - even in a law-abiding manner - is the wrong route for you to take. Now for me, it was right and proper, especially after fallin' so low. I needed to regain some sense of purpose. You...I don't know what's proper for you now. All I know is that you've got a whole 'nother life ahead of you, and I want to help you figure out what to do with it. Givin' you a roof over your head is the easy part. Where you go from here...Hell, I can only point out what looks like a good direction. I just don't want you to second-guess yourself and start doin' things that go against your nature because you think your new life is only about that." He pointed at the ring on Jonah's hand. "If that was really the case, then God or whomever brought you back would've most likely made you as brainless as them other Black Lanterns so that you _couldn't_ second-guess things." Greg stood up again and picked up his guitar, saying, "Okay, lecture's over. Time for bed." He began to walk over to the patio door, then stopped to look back at Jonah, who'd remained seated. "You comin'?" Greg asked. "'Cause once I turn on the alarm, you won't be able to get inside the house."

Jonah didn't get up, he just leaned his head back and stared at the unchanging stars, his brow slightly furrowed. Greg surmised that the man was mulling over what he'd said, but the method by which Jonah was doing it might've surprised the former Vigilante:

_Do yuh understand whut Saunders is askin' of me? Of us?_

**[Compassion...will. Avarice].**

_Thet mean yuh want tuh do it? Best be sure of whut yo're sayin', 'cause I don't need yuh gettin' cold feet in the middle of a fight._

**[Will!]**

_It could get rough. Might go up against worse horrors than either one of us has already seen. Might even go up against something thet could kill us...if'n such a thing is possible._

**[Compassion].**

_Alright then. Yuh change yer mind, though, tell me afore we get in over our heads._

With a grunt, Jonah stood up and turned to face Greg, who noticed a familiar gleam in the eyes of his old friend as he said, "So...whut's this cussed job of yers pay?"

_**NEXT ISSUE: The first installment of our multi-part tale, "Narcocorrido"!**_


	13. Gunslinger Blues

**NARCOCORRIDO**

**Part 1: Gunslinger Blues**

"How 'bout this one?"

**[Fear].**

"Didn't like it? Okay, whut about...naw, thet one was lousy."

**[Hope].**

"The fella sounds like he's got marbles in his mouth. Yuh ain't never gonna learn tuh talk proper if'n yuh listen tuh stuff like thet all day. Wait...where'd...yeah, this one's good."

**[Hope].**

"Damn right. Now this fella is worth listenin' tuh." Jonah popped the CD of _American IV_ into the stereo, then pressed the track-advance button until he got to the part where Johnny Cash sang "Sam Hall". There were other songs on the album that he deemed good, but Jonah remembered this particular one from the days before there was such a thing as recorded music, and therefore it got played first. "Muh name it is Sam Hall, an' Ah hate yuh one an' all," Jonah sang along, "an' Ah hate yuh one an' all...damn yer eyes!"

**[Rage?]**

"Not one bit, they're just words," Jonah told the ring, then walked over to the desk in the corner of the bedroom. "Just 'cause Ah say the words don't mean Ah really feel like thet."

**[Jonah Hex of Earth is at peace].**

"Thet's right: Ah'm at peace, but Ah kin still yell 'damn yer eyes' all Ah like." A smirk came to his lips as he said, "Why don't yuh give it a shot? Say 'damn yer eyes', nice an' loud." He could feel the ring's frustration as it tried to repeat the phrase, but it just couldn't do it, eventually conceding defeat by whispering **[Fear]**. "It's okay, son," Jonah told the ring as he flopped down in the desk chair and went back to reading his book. "Just keep listenin' tuh the music, an' maybe the words will start tuh pop out when yuh ain't pushin' so hard."

Admittedly, Jonah was hoping this experiment would yield results a bit faster. It began three days before, during his first full day in the Saunders household: he'd shown Greg the Elvis CD from Maggie's truck and asked if there was anything in the house to play it on. Though surprised that Jonah was already aware of what CDs were, Greg happily showed him how to operate the high-end sound system in the living room. As the album played, Greg expounded on all the musical genres that had sprung up over the past hundred-odd years, so Jonah didn't notice right away that the ring was trying to sing along whenever one of the words in its limited vocabulary came up. Greg, of course, couldn't hear the ring at all, but once Jonah explained how it didn't seem capable of saying more than seven words and one sentence, Greg theorized that, since it was "singing" of its own volition, playing music constantly might help the ring expand its vocabulary. They set up a portable stereo on the dresser in Jonah's room, along with a stack of CDs Greg thought the bounty hunter would enjoy, so that while Jonah spent his days boning up on the century's-worth of history he'd missed out on, he could keep the tunes spinning in the background. There hadn't yet been any spontaneous gabbling on the ring's part, but Jonah tried to remain optimistic.

As he skimmed the book - a rather dry one about the "cold war" America fought against Russia - Jonah got the sensation of someone looking over his shoulder, a side-effect of the black ring's presence. It always seemed to intensify when he was reading, whether due to him sitting so still or because of the ring's curiosity about what was printed on the pages, Jonah wasn't sure. He hadn't even been able to determine yet if the ring understood how to read, or if it simply gleaned the information from Jonah's own mind after he'd read it himself. For now, it was another in a series of mysteries surrounding the ring, and one he was sure he could resolve if it could figure out how to talk properly. The whole situation frustrated him sometimes: How was Jonah supposed to teach the ring anything if it couldn't tell him what it needed to learn? For all he knew, it was a cussed genius that only lacked a few elocution lessons.

Around the time Johnny Cash began singing about the streets of Laredo, Jonah heard the alarm on the front door beep. _Thet'll be Helen_, he thought after glancing at the clock by the bed. After only three days in the house, Jonah's evening routine had become firmly established: Helen would get home by seven, she'd fix up dinner, and the two of them would eat before Greg arrived, usually some time after nine at night, then they'd all wind up in the living room or in Greg's study, talking about this and that until they finally went to bed around midnight or so. This new life Jonah had wasn't all that exciting, but it certainly was predictable.

He left the bedroom and walked down the hall, meeting Helen just as she shut the front door with her foot - she was hugging a large paper sack in one arm and a bundle of mail was tucked under the other. "Want a hand?" he asked.

"Gladly." She passed off the sack, saying, "I stopped by this little Indian place near the gallery for some takeout...thought maybe I could broaden your culinary horizons a bit."

"Ah've spent a good amount of time with Indians," he told her as they walked into the kitchen. "Reckon there ain't nothin' they've ever made thet Ah ain't already had."

Helen laughed and shook her head, which Jonah found odd, since he hadn't meant the statement to be funny. He set the sack on the kitchen counter, then scrounged around in the refrigerator for a beer. "How are your studies going?" Helen asked him.

"Okay, Ah suppose," he said with a shrug. "Just wish the books weren't so dull."

"There's lots of history programs on TV that might break up the monotony for you."

"No thanks," he answered rather curtly. She and Greg kept trying to steer him towards watching television, and though he'd sat through some programs with them out of politeness, Jonah hadn't developed any desire to turn it on when they weren't around.

"Well, the only other thing I can recommend is the Internet, but I doubt you're ready for that yet." She began sorting through the mail, tossing it one piece at a time onto the kitchen table, until she got to a large padded envelope. After glancing at the name on the computer-printed label, she said, "Wow, I wasn't expecting this so soon."

"Come again?" Jonah turned towards her, a bottle of Corona in hand.

She handed him the envelope, saying, "Looks like Greg's friends in the superhero community work pretty fast."

Jonah grunted. Two days before, Greg had snapped a few pictures of him to send off to the fella who ran that "Oracle" whatsits, in order to set up all the proper paperwork Jonah would need for life in the 21st Century. A hundred years ago, if someone wanted to start a new life, it took little more than moving to a new town far from where you started and calling yourself by another name. But nowadays, there was apparently so much information floating around in the ether - and nearly all of it available to anyone who bothered to look - that the process had become much more complex, hence the reason Greg was handing it off to the Oracle. "Fast is nice, but let's see if'n the work is any good," Jonah said, tearing open the envelope and spreading the contents out on the table: a few small cards, a sheaf of official-looking documents, a cell phone, and a slim, leather-bound booklet. He saw one of the cards bore his picture, so he picked it up and asked Helen, "Why in the world do Ah need a little photograph of muhself?"

"That's your driver's license. And this," she told him, inspecting each of the other cards in turn, "is your Social Security card, your private investigator's license for the state of Arizona, your passport for border crossings, your concealed weapons permit, and a debit card, presumably tied to the same bank account as that checkbook there." She pointed at the booklet, then began to flip through the larger documents. "The rest of this just looks like background details: birth certificate, school records, credit history...next thing you know, you'll be getting junk mail with your name on it."

Jonah didn't know what "junk mail" meant, so he ignored the comment and tossed the driver's license back onto the table, trading it for the cell phone. Thankfully, it had actual buttons instead of a fancy-dan touchscreen, though he still wasn't entirely sure how to turn the device on. "Don't see how this thing's necessary, either," he muttered, stabbing buttons at random until the tiny display lit up. "This century's full of gewgaws Ah could do without."

Suddenly, the cell phone's ringtone went off - Jonah recognized it as a telephone bell from his own time, but was perplexed as to how it was making the sound. He looked over at Helen, who said, "It's your phone, so presumably it's for you." He continued to look at her until she leaned over and pointed at a small green button. "Press that one to talk."

Jonah did as instructed. "Who is this?"

"_Mr. Hex?_" The voice on the other end sounded neither male nor female, but it possessed a resonance that sent chills up Jonah's spine. "_This is Oracle. I'm just checking in to see if everything in the package is to your satisfaction_."

"Yo're...yo're the fella who runs the Oracle?" he said, trying to not let the strange electronic voice unnerve him any more than it already was.

"_That's one way of saying it. You can just call me Oracle._"

"Okay." He gave his head a good shake, then said, "How'd yuh know Ah even had this here telephone yet? Or have yuh been callin' at random ever since yuh put it in the mail?"

Oracle laughed, which sounded even stranger than the regular speaking voice. "_No, it was a little more sophisticated than that. Saunders asked that I include a GPS chip in the phone in case of emergency. When the package arrived at your position, the tracking system alerted me, and turning on the phone activated a callback_."

"Thet's a whole lot of words Ah don't understand."

"_It's okay,_" Oracle replied, laughing again. "_All you need to know is that, if necessary, you can be located anywhere on the face of the Earth, so long as you have that phone on you_."

Jonah pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it. "Yo're joshin' me."

Helen whispered to him, "What's going on?"

"This fella says he kin figure out wherever Ah am with this gyppy-ass telephone."

"With _what_?"

"Here." Jonah held out the phone. "Thet voice is puttin' muh teeth on edge, anyhow."

Tentatively, Helen took it and began speaking with Oracle, and within thirty seconds, she was laughing as well. Jonah found himself getting mildly annoyed by this - he felt like he was the butt of some joke no one wanted to explain to him - so he knocked back some of his beer, then began flipping through the documents Helen set down. Most of it was gibberish to him, but when he looked over the birth certificate, he was glad to see Oracle had kept the information as close to the truth as possible, seeing as how he had enough new things to memorize already. The fella had even been clever enough to scramble the original numbers in Jonah's birth year, changing it from 1838 to 1983. _Thet'll make me twenty-seven come November_, he thought, _same as the year the War ended._ The notion of being that young again was mind-boggling: despite the youthful, unscarred face he saw in the mirror, Jonah still thought of himself as an old man of sixty-six underneath it all, and supposed there would always be part of him that remained so. _So long as it ain't the part the ladies enjoy, Ah reckon Ah kin deal with it._ Setting the documents aside, he turned his attention to the checkbook (a method of payment he'd never really trusted, preferring cash transactions for his line of work) and thumbed through the registry until he reached the sole entry. After staring at it for a good five seconds, he grabbed the cell phone out of Helen's hand and barked into the receiver, "Where the Hell did the money come from?"

"_Excuse me?_" Oracle said.

"There's a number written down with the checks." Jonah's voice had taken on a hard edge. "Ah'm under the impression thet's been deposited in some account yuh set up fer me?"

"_Yes, I..._"

"Ah don't want it."

"_Mr. Hex, if you would just..._"

"Either yuh conjured the money up from nowheres like yuh did all this paperwork, or yuh stole it from somebody. Now Ah know Ah'm hard up at the moment, but Ah ain't about tuh get involved in nothin' shady, especially with a fella who doesn't even tell folks who he really is."

Helen reached out a hand, saying to him, "Oracle already explained to me about the money. It's not what you think."

"Ah ain't gonna take money Ah didn't earn," he answered, "especially if'n it's dirty."

"_But you did earn that money," _Oracle told him,_ "over a hundred years ago."_

Jonah was taken aback by the statement. "Yo're tellin' me thet Ah made over fourteen thousand dollars an' just plain forgot about? Ah'll admit, there's a few gaps in muh memory, but this seems a mite too large tuh slip through."

"_That's because you didn't make it all at once. On a lark, I dug through financial records going back over a century and found multiple accounts in over a dozen states with your name on them. I was rather surprised at first, but then I recalled the banking system wasn't as tightly-knit back then, plus you were always travelling, so I figure you must've been stashing large sums of money in whatever bank was nearby. When you died, your widow most likely didn't know where all the accounts were, so they went dormant after a while._" Jonah could hear a tapping sound over the phone as Oracle spoke. "_From there, it was simply a matter of figuring out which ones could be made active again. The Great Depression wiped out quite a few of them, and various other recessions depleted some of your remaining capital, but once I added in a century's worth of cumulative interest...well, you've seen the result."_

"So thet whole fourteen thousand an' change is legally mine, even after all these years?"

"_That's all I could scrounge up for you. I also found a couple of land deeds in your name, but thanks to squatter's rights and similar laws, you lost your claim to those decades ago. And before you get too excited about your newfound fortune, keep in mind that it's equal to a year's pay for a minimum-wage earner in many states, so you've got a nice next egg, but you're not rich."_ Oracle paused, then asked, "_Were you really going to turn down that much money?"_

"Yessir, Ah was. It wouldn't be right tuh take it without workin' fer it in some fashion."

"_I'll keep that in mind_. _Is there anything else I sent along that you have concerns with?_"

"Cain't think of nothin'." He pushed the papers around on the table a bit before saying in a quiet tone, "Sorry fer yellin' at yuh afore. Ah do appreciate all the work yuh've put into this."

"_Apology accepted...and as for the work I put in, that's what I'm here for. Should you ever need me in the future, just look up 'O' in your phone's directory."_

"Thank yuh kindly, sir."

"_No problem, Mr. Hex, and welcome back_." There was a click on the line, ending the call, and Jonah set the phone down on top of the documents.

Helen regarded him, saying, "You okay with all this now?"

"Reckon so. If'n the money is well an' truly mine, then Ah'll gladly take it, along with all this other stuff." He cocked an eyebrow. "Now thet Ah've actually got two coins tuh rub together, y'all want me tuh start payin' fer room an' board?"

"No," she replied, opening the sack of takeout food, "but if you like, you can foot the bill for dinner tomorrow night."

* * *

When they finally sat down to eat, Jonah was mildly disappointed to find out that the term "Indian" now referred mostly to the country of India, as was the case with that night's meal. The stuff wasn't bad, but he'd been looking forward to the sort of food he used to eat when living with the Apache (which he now apparently had to call "Native Americans"). Jonah was still poking at his tandoori chicken when Greg got home at a quarter 'til eight - he was surprised to see Greg so early, but Helen seemed to know right away what was up, saying to her husband after greeting him with a kiss, "You have to suit up tonight?"

"Yep. Got a call from one of my contacts." Greg sat down at the kitchen table with a sigh. "There's supposed to be a drug trade happening around eleven o'clock."

"More marijuana like last week, or heavier stuff?"

"Dragon sweat."

Helen's face twisted with worry, while Jonah asked, "Whut in blazes is dragon sweat?"

"Something new that's been turning up on both sides of the border over the last four months," Greg said. "The lab guys think it's a combination of hallucinogenic and amphetamine, but they can't figure out what exactly it's made out of. We've found it mostly in tab form - they're little bits of paper infused with the drug that you stick on your tongue - but there's also droppers full of the stuff floatin' around, and those are real easy to OD on. A kid takes too much dragon sweat, and you might as well be dealin' with a rabid animal...they even foam at the mouth, for Christ's sake. As of last week, we've got six deaths we can trace back to that drug, along with twenty cases of dragon sweat-fueled frenzies." He shook his head, saying, "The only good thing I have to say about it is that there appears to be only one cartel pushin' the stuff, so if we can squash them, we can end the whole mess."

"Ah' thet's whut yo're gonna do tonight? Go out an' squash 'em?"

"Well, I'm gonna squash this particular shipment, and I also hope to bag all the bozos who show up tonight so I can grill them for information."

Jonah reached into his pocket and pulled out the ID cards Oracle had sent him, fanning them out before Greg like it was a royal flush. "Need somebody tuh watch yer back?"

"Hell yes! Now I know we'll bag 'em all!"

Greg's mood brightened greatly as he looked over the other documents, taking bites of his share of the takeout food from time to time. He'd already prepared the necessary paperwork to make Jonah a liaison with the Warpath PD, so all he needed to do was fill in the proper blanks with Jonah's newly-minted information, and everything would be nice and official. As soon as the two men finished their meal, Greg began to change into what he called his "other uniform": the distinctive garb of the Vigilante. Jonah didn't understand why the man bothered since everyone now knew it was Greg behind the bandana, and went so far as to tell him so, to which Greg retorted, "Why were you still wearing a Confederate uniform forty years after the Civil War ended?" Jonah declined to answer, and the discussion was dropped.

Helen tagged along when they went down to the garage beneath the house, where Greg stored his motorcycles. He had over a dozen, though some were incomplete models he used for parts. "You said the other day that you knew how to ride one of these," Greg said to Jonah as they walked past the vehicles. "You weren't lyin' to me, were you?"

"Not a bit...though it has been a while." Jonah paused by a Harley bedecked in black chrome. "An' the ones Ah rode had thicker wheels."

"Oh no, not that one. If there's a chance you might lay it in the dirt, then you're gonna take one that doesn't look so nice." Greg led him over to another cycle, saying, "This one runs just as good, I promise. Hop on and give it a shot."

Jonah inspected the cycle for a minute, then straddled it, put his foot on the kickstart, and got it roaring on the first try. A slight smile came to his lips: when Jonah had been stuck in that future wasteland of 2050, speeding along on a motorcycle had been one of the few things he found enjoyable (though he could've done without the noise and the smell of exhaust). He pushed the cycle forward off of its stand just fine, but when he tried to rev the engine, he twisted the throttle just a shade too much, causing the back tire to skid across the garage floor. "Back off, Ah've got it," Jonah snapped as Greg went to grab the handlebars.

"Maybe you two should take horses instead," Helen suggested.

"Ah said Ah've got it!" Jonah straightened out the motorcycle so it was pointed towards the ramp that led outside. "Just ain't done this in a hunnert an' thirty-five years, thet's all."

"The man says he's got it," Greg told his wife, who was still giving him a look of concern. "Don't worry, we've got a couple of hours to get to the rendezvous, so we can take it slow on the road."

"Okay." She gave him a kiss, then pulled his bandana up into place. "You be careful."

"Always am." He hopped on one of the other cycles and pulled it alongside Jonah, telling him, "Just follow behind me, no fancy stuff. Okay?"

Jonah nodded, and let Greg take the lead up the ramp. The sun had nearly set, casting a red glow over the Arizona landscape as they drove down a deserted back road. The rendezvous was out in the middle of nowhere, and when they reached the location an hour later, the only light left to see by came from the headlamps on their cycles and the half-moon hanging in the sky. Luckily, the black ring had switched Jonah's vision over to monochrome without him even having to ask, so he could see the entire area as bright as day, though what he saw puzzled him: a massive white wall looming above a lot full of short metal poles. "This doesn't make any sense tuh me," he said to Greg. "Is something goin' up here or comin' down?"

"It's a drive-in theatre," Greg answered. "You park by one of the poles, then pull the little speaker into your car so you can hear the movie that's being projected on the screen." They slowly drove their cycles over to a building on the far side of the lot. "Place has changed hands quite a few times over the years, but nobody's been able to bring in enough business lately to keep it in the black. I tried to buy it myself last year, but some developer from back East outbid me. The dope's probably gonna knock all this down and put up a big-box store."

The whole thing still didn't make sense, but Jonah decided it wasn't important to the job at hand and ignored it. They stopped their cycles next to the building's entrance and, after Greg put his lock-picking skills to use, walked them inside the now-shuttered concession stand. Once that was done, Greg looked back outside and said, "We'd better take a few minutes and try to obscure our tracks. Don't want those smugglers getting wind of us."

Jonah flexed his ring hand, then pointed it in the direction they'd come from. "Yuh heard the man," Jonah told the ring. "Best get tuh work." A cloud of dark matter like fine ash poured out of the ring, sweeping across the ground to smooth out both their tire tracks and footprints. As the cloud banked around a corner, Jonah asked, "Yuh think a half-mile out will be enough?"

"Yeah, that'll be fine," Greg answered, then shook his head with a laugh. "Seein' you ring-sling like that is gonna take some gettin' used to."

"Preachin' tuh the choir there." As soon as their trail had been cleared away, they went back inside the building, where Greg began setting up a small video camera on the concession stand's counter. "Whut's all thet fer?" Jonah asked as Greg attached a flexible scope lens.

"Gatherin' evidence." He threaded the tip of the scope through one of the bullet holes in the metal shutter - it appeared that someone had used the concession stand for target practice at some point. "If we record the drug trade from beginning to end, it'll make it harder for them to shake off the charges in court. Remember that, Hex: we _have_ to let them finish the transaction before we bust 'em." He checked the angle on the camera's tiny monitor. "There, that covers just about the whole lot."

Jonah peered at the night-vision image on the monitor. "Whut're yuh gonna do if'n they decide tuh do it someplace outside the lot?"

"Don't jinx this, Hex." Greg dragged a stepstool over to the counter, saying, "Okay, park your butt somewheres, we've got some waitin' to do."

The bounty hunter sat down on the floor cross-legged, then pulled one of his Dragoons from its holster. It was habit for him to check the cylinders when he knew a fight was on the way, and though his guns no longer fired actual bullets, but rather dark matter supplied by the ring, he still felt a need to go through the motions. As he ran his hands over the gun, he could see a deep green tone in his aura, a representation of the ironclad willpower within him that kept the black ring charged. The ring currently held a tinge of green as well, along with a hint of yellow, all muted to a degree by its dark-matter nature. _Try an' stow thet fear, _he silently told the ring_. Ah don't want tuh pull the trigger an' have a dry-fire 'cause yo're too scared tuh act._

**[Will]**, the ring replied, and Jonah saw the yellow slowly fade out as he and Greg waited for the clock to reach eleven. At around five minutes before the hour, they heard the rumble of an engine - Jonah leapt to his feet and looked through a bullet hole at eye level. "There's a truck comin' into the lot," he whispered.

"I see it." Greg's attention was split between another peephole and the camera monitor. When he saw two people exit the truck, a grin broke out on his face. "The Lopez brothers...we meet again."

"Yuh know these skunks?"

"Local gangbangers, and slippery ones at that. Been tryin' to nail 'em for months, but I never could get enough evidence to convict. Reckon that's gonna change tonight."

"Are they the ones makin' this dragon sweat stuff?"

"No, that's some Mexican cartel called Los Magos...'The Magicians'." Greg moved closer to Jonah in order to keep his voice as low as possible. "From what I've heard, they started as plain ol' coyotes sneakin' people across the border - they earned the name Los Magos because no one could ever catch them in the act - then four months ago, they suddenly turned into a drug cartel, dealin' exclusively in dragon sweat. Don't know why they changed, other than the notion that sellin' drugs pays better."

"Maybe we'll find out once we get a hold of 'em." Jonah spotted another truck in the distance. "Get ready, the other half's a-comin'." The Lopez brothers had driven there in a small, boxy delivery truck, but the new arrival was a standard pickup with a tarp draped over the cargo in the back. The vehicle pulled up next to the other, and when the driver got out, Jonah said under his breath, "This fella looks like the Devil."

"It's just a Halloween mask," Greg replied. "Members of Los Magos hide their faces so nobody can ID them." Bathed in the glow of their mutual taillights, the Lopez brothers stood silently by as the Los Magos man opened his truck's tailgate, climbed in, then pulled off the tarp to reveal the cargo: a large, padlocked animal carrier. "Looks like my contact was wrong," Greg muttered with a hint of disappointment. "No drugs, just illegal dog-fightin'. Still, if we bust 'em on animal cruelty charges, we might be able to wring some info out of them 'bout any actual dragon sweat shipments."

"But we've gotta wait 'til they move thet crate from one truck tuh the other."

"Yep." Greg had his own gun out now, along with his badge, while the brothers handed over a duffle bag to the Los Magos man. Then the three of them slid the carrier off of the truck bed - the carrier was made of opaque plastic, so it was impossible for either Greg or Jonah to see what condition the dog inside might be in - and wrestled it over to the other vehicle. The moment it was resting in the back of the delivery truck, Greg slapped Jonah on the shoulder and headed for the door. They slipped outside as quietly as possible, but as soon as they came out from behind the building, Greg hollered, "Police! Everybody on the ground, now!"

The biggest advantage Jonah had found to seeing things as Black Lanterns did (aside from perfect night vision) was the ability to glimpse other people's emotional auras. Even if someone had a flawless poker face or total mastery of their body language, they couldn't do a damn thing to mask how they felt beneath the surface. So when he saw the Lopez brothers' auras go from orange to yellow in a heartbeat, he knew they wouldn't be much of a threat. The Los Magos man, however, went straight to red with a hard frost of green, meaning he would surely fight the lawmen tooth and nail, so by the time the devil-faced dealer pulled a gun out from the waistband of his jeans, Jonah wasn't surprised at all. "Drop it!" Jonah roared, pointing his own gun at the man's head - Greg had explained to him about not firing unless fired upon, a rule that rankled him somewhat, but he would do his best to follow it.

As the man's gun swung up, Jonah silently told the ring to toss a shield over himself and Greg, but before it could do so, the Los Magos man quickly turned the gun towards the animal carrier, stuck the muzzle through the wire door, and unloaded three shots. A horrific scream issued forth from the carrier, making the hair on the back of Jonah's neck stand on end. The sound seemed to free the Lopez brothers from their panic-stricken paralysis, and they began to run off into the night just as the Los Magos man finally pointed his gun at the lawmen and opened fire. By now, the ring had the shield in place, and the bullets bounced harmlessly off of the smoky wall of dark matter. "Kin Ah shoot the bastard now?" Jonah asked Greg.

"Worry about the other two," Greg replied, then ducked around the edge of the shield and popped off a quick shot at the Los Magos man, who went down as the bullet tore through his knee. "I believe my partner told you to drop it," Greg said as he advanced on the man. "If you don't, I'll take care of that other knee for you." The Los Magos man began to raise the gun, then let it fall to the ground. "Wise choice." Greg picked up the gun before turning to Jonah again. "Well? Are you gonna get after those Lopez boys or not?"

"Already did." Jonah jerked a thumb in the direction the brothers ran off in, and Greg looked to see them tangled up in a maze of dark-matter ropes strung amongst the speaker poles. "Havin' this ring sure beats chasin' owlhoots down."

The Vigilante pulled down his bandana and let out a low whistle. "You really are becomin' dangerous with that thing," he said. Unfortunately, he was so focused on Hex's handiwork that he didn't spot the Los Magos man pulling out a switchblade, which was soon sinking into his calf. Greg let out a yelp of pain, and without a second thought, Jonah whipped around and shot the Los Magos man in the center of the grinning devil mask he wore. "Stupid...why'd you do that?" Greg gasped as he put a hand over his leg wound. "We needed him for information."

"Reflex," Jonah answered, then helped Greg hobble over to the delivery truck and sat him down next to the animal carrier. "Next time, Ah'll let 'em carve yuh up like a Christmas goose."

Greg began to wrap his bandana around the wound, saying, "In this case, I wish you had. Those Lopez boys might know a little about how Los Magos operates, but I was more anxious to chat up our devilish friend here." Without looking up, he waved a bloody hand in the direction of the gangbangers. "Speakin' of which, go haul their butts over here, would ya? I don't want them to wiggle out of your makeshift spider web while we're not lookin'." When he realized Jonah wasn't moving, he raised his head to see the bounty hunter staring into the animal carrier. "You hear me, Hex?"

If Hex did, he made no sign. The man's face was like stone, his attention focused entirely on whatever lay behind the carrier's wire door. Greg imagined the dog inside was probably a mess after being shot at point-blank range (to be sure, it didn't smell very good), but Jonah's expression didn't seem like one of disgust or revulsion. Then Jonah used the ring to cut through the padlock so he could open the door...and what he pulled out made Greg blanch.

It wasn't a dog, but rather some sort of lizard-thing about the same size and shape of an adult human. Its arms and legs had been cut off, the stumps cauterized shut, and all the teeth had been pulled out of its elongated snout, leaving behind ragged gums. A bullet had torn through one of its bulbous red eyes and blasted out the back of its head, the ichor pouring out of the resulting hole now mixing with the thin coating of slime upon the creature's flesh. The smell it gave off only got worse now that Jonah had moved the body, to the point where Greg had to fight back the urge to throw up. "What in God's name is that?" he choked out.

"A bigger problem than drugs or dog-fightin'," Jonah said. "Y'all got Worms."

_**TO BE CONTINUED!**_


	14. Shotgun Opera

_Those of you who keep up with "All-Star Western" and Jonah's official adventures know that a certain something happened between the posting of the last issue of "Shades of Gray" and this one here. In ASW#21, Jonah Hex was transported to the here-and-now of the DCNu, and will remain amongst the "future folk" for an unforeseen amount of time. Personally, I'm loving every minute of it, and am just tickled that Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray have touched upon some of the same things in their title that I have with my fic - as I've said before, we're drawing from the same source material, so there's always a good chance that our ideas will overlap. Frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way, as it shows we're all doing our best to remain true to the spirit of the character that John Albano & Tony DeZuniga created over forty years ago._

_That being said, Jonah's present predicament highlights something that cropped up not long after I began "Shades of Gray" in 2010. I knew that Jonah being dropped into the Modern DCU would affect things, and eventually the continuity of my story would veer off from what DC was printing on a monthly basis. However, I never suspected that DC would reboot their entire line just a year later, altering their own continuity to such a degree that some of the characters I want to use in my fic no longer exist in "The New 52"._

_But fear not, dear readers: what's happened to the DCU since August 31st, 2011 will not affect my plans for this story. I will continue to use the continuity laid down before Flashpoint - Golden Age and all - though some things from the DCNu may bleed over (that's only natural when dealing with parallel universes). It was a decision I made not long after the reboot, and I wasn't planning on making a full announcement about it until around issue #20 or so (you'll see why when we get there), but J&J doing their own version of "Jonah in modern times" made me realize I should tell you fine folks right now so as to avoid confusion down the road._

_Again, I love what J&J are doing, always have, and I hope "All-Star Western" becomes DC's #1 title (okay, a tad unrealistic, but I can dream!). Just remember that the Jonah Hex I'm writing about in "Shades of Gray" never teamed up with Booster Gold and got his ass sent to 2013. My Hex went to 2050, then went back home and died. Then some other things happened..._

**NARCOCORRIDO**

**Part 2: Shotgun Opera**

"'The Worms of the Earth'...thet's whut the Indians call 'em in the old tales. They were supposed tuh be older'n mankind, more advanced, an' they tried tuh enslave some of the early tribes. The Indians fought back an' drove 'em underground, which is where they stayed 'til white folks began homesteadin' on Indian land. The Worms rose up again, so me an' a bunch of fellas had tuh whup 'em so's they'd quit eatin' up cattle an' people an' such."

Jonah and Greg were sitting on the tailgate of the pickup truck, with the animal carrier holding the mutilated carcass of the Worm on the ground before them. Earlier, they'd locked the Lopez brothers in the back of the delivery truck (their best option since they had no squad car), then Greg called the station in Warpath and asked for a crew to be sent out while Jonah retrieved their motorcycles. With nothing else to do but wait, Greg had Jonah fill him in on this "Worm" business, though he wasn't too fond of what he was hearing. "Did you just say they eat people?"

"Eat the men an' rape the women, if'n yuh want tuh pick nits. Hell, from whut Ah heard, they'd rape anything they could get their claws on, 'specially the ones thet were half-Worm."

"You mean like half human and half _that_?" Greg pointed towards the carcass.

"Yep...an' the result is just as ugly as yuh think it is. Looks like this fella here is all Worm, though, so maybe they ain't gotten busy again yet." As Jonah spoke, he began to rub his palms against the sleeves of his dark gray shirt, like he was cold. "'Course, whut's really got me puzzled is how the damn thing is even here. We killed the big Mama Worm whut birthed 'em, so they should've died out ages ago."

"Maybe they're a long-lived species, or this one could be from another group of Worms."

"The latter seems likely. The ones we fought were up in the Texas Panhandle, an' presumably the Los Magos fella brought this one from Mexico. Ah know Worms are good at burrowin', but there's gotta be at least five hunnert miles between here an' there."

A silence fell between them as they each mulled over the situation, then Greg began to sing under his breath in Spanish, "They fought the dragons deep in their lair..."

"Whut're yuh goin' on about, Saunders?"

"It's from a _narcocorrido_...a song written about drug cartel or kingpin. It's like Mexican gangsta rap...and you have no idea what that is so why am I botherin' to explain it that way." Greg sighed, then said, "You remember how some outlaws like the James gang or Billy the Kid would become folk heroes? It's kinda the same thing, only in this case, the cartels usually hire the musicians to write these songs in their honor. When dragon sweat began hittin' the area, I tracked down the musician Los Magos favored and convinced him to do some spy work for me."

"He's the contact yuh were talkin' 'bout?"

"Yep. Tonight's lead was the first solid one he ever gave me. Anyhow, I was thinkin' that..." He paused and looked at Jonah, who was now wringing his hands together. "Are you okay there?"

"Thet gunk won't come off. Don't remember Worms bein' so slimy."

"Yeah, it is kinda gross." Greg examined his own hands and said, "Glad I wear gloves with my costume...gonna have to clean 'em when we get home." He peeled off the gloves so they were inside out, then stuffed them in his back pocket. "I brought some water along, maybe you can wash the slime off." He eased himself off of the tailgate, hobbled over to the motorcycles, and pulled a bottle of spring water out of the saddlebag attached to the back of his cycle. As he walked over to Jonah again, he saw that his friend was now tearing at the skin with his fingernails, to the point where droplets of blood were falling onto his jeans. "What in...Jonah, stop it!" He dropped the bottle and tried to grab Jonah by the wrists, but the man jerked away so hard that he fell off the tailgate. "What the Hell is wrong with you?" Greg asked, but Jonah didn't seem to hear, as he kept on tearing at his bloody hands, all the while muttering something incoherent. Greg had no idea what was causing this behavior, but getting Jonah to quit injuring himself seemed like a good plan of action, so Greg once again made a grab for his wrists, this time succeeding. "Dammit, Hex, quit fightin' me!" Greg yelled as he pinned the man to the ground. "Tell me what's goin' on!"

Jonah stared right through Greg as he gasped, "Crawlin'...'side me...eatin'..." He suddenly cried out and banged his head on the dry earth. "Nnngh...God! Geddout!"

"What are you talkin' about? Is the ring makin' you act like this?" But Jonah didn't answer, he just continued to thrash about as if possessed. Then Greg noticed the foamy line of spittle running out of the corner of Jonah's mouth. "Can't be..." Greg muttered, then his eyes darted over to the animal carrier as the pieces all clicked into place. "Jonah, listen to me. You've been dosed with dragon sweat. Whatever you're seein' isn't real, it's just the drug playin' with your mind. You're gonna have to ride it out, y'hear?" Even as he said the words, Greg knew it wouldn't be that simple: a dragon sweat trip could last for hours, sometimes days if the dose was large enough. Once the boys arrived, they'd have to get Jonah to the hospital and try to detox him, or at the very least keep him strapped to a bed until the drug wore off. Greg was silently debating whether he should tie him up during the interim when Jonah suddenly stiffened, then relaxed, the flesh of his body becoming gray and desiccated as he did so. Though Greg was aware of Jonah's occasional "condition", this was the first time he'd seen it, and he immediately let go of his friend and backpedaled away from the body, thinking, _Oh Christ, it killed him._ Then Jonah let out a groan and sat up, cradling his head in his bony hands. Not knowing how else to say it, Greg asked, "Are you gonna be okay, Hex?"

"_Think this'll take a few minutes_," Jonah replied, his voice taking on an unearthly tone that made the hair on the back of Greg's neck stand up. "_Everything was a mite fuzzy there...did yuh say something 'bout me bein' drugged?"_

"I'm almost positive. You're probably not familiar with the notion of lickin' toads to get high, are you?"

"_Ah beg yer goddam pardon?_"

"I know, who'd think of something like that, but it really is a thing. There's certain poisonous toads that you can get a buzz off of if you ingest just a little bit of that poison. I'm thinkin' maybe these Worms of yours have something similar going on."

"_Ah didn't lick the damn thing_."

"No, but you got slime all over your hands...or more accurately, your skin...while I didn't get any on me because I was wearing gloves. I know it sounds crazy, but I think the Los Magos boys are makin' dragon sweat out of that slime." The majority of Hex's body had finally reverted back to a living state - the skin on his hands was still regenerating, but at least the slime was now gone - so Greg came back over to sit next to him. "Y'know that _narcocorrido_ I was singing? It's a story about how Los Magos fought against a nest of dragons, cut their bellies open, and drew out piles of gold. I made the connection pretty quick that the 'dragons' were probably your Worms, but it didn't occur to me that this drug might be exactly what its name says it is until you started foamin' like a rabid dog."

"Reckon thet explains why the fella killed it. He was hopin' we wouldn't figure it out." Jonah shook his head, both in disbelief and to clear his mind. "Damnation, why would anybody want tuh take something thet makes yuh feel like there's bugs crawlin' around inside of yuh?"

"Sounds like you had a bad trip. It can vary from one dose to the next. Just be glad your body was able to flush it out all at once. I was about to hogtie you."

Jonah sat quietly for a moment, then said, "Ah don't remember nothin' like this happenin' back the first time Ah ran into 'em. 'Course, most of them Worms would bite yer arm clean off if'n yuh got close enough tuh touch one."

"Well, not all toads are poisonous, either. If this is from another group of Worms, then maybe they evolved a little dif'rent."

"Whut about yer musician friend? If'n he's been singin' 'bout these Worms, then thet means he's known 'bout 'em all this time."

"I'd like to think he would've told me in advance if he'd seen one. It's more'n likely that Los Magos told him about their finding the 'dragons' lair', and he thought they were speaking figuratively. Hell, that's what I thought." Greg saw a light off in the distance and stood up, saying, "Looks like the crew's rollin' in." Jonah followed his gaze to see two SUVs with police markings coming their way, as well as an ambulance and a truck that reminded him of Maggie's rig, except this one had a long, flat bed like a lumber car. Realizing they'd be here within minutes, Jonah had the ring make him a pair of gloves to cover his still-healing hands. Maybe once he got to know these Warpath lawmen better, he'd let them in on his secret, but certainly not from the get-go.

The vehicles carefully drove through the maze of speaker poles that dotted the drive-in's landscape until they reached the spot where Jonah and Greg stood. From out of one of the SUVs came a bear of a man, followed by a much-smaller man dressed in blue. "Heard you had a fun night, boss," the big man said to Greg.

"Yep, damn shame you missed it." As the newcomers walked over, Greg made a sweeping gesture with his hand, saying, "Boys, I'd like you to meet Jonah Hex...he's the freelancer I was telling you about. Jonah, this here's Silver and Henry."

They shook hands all around, with Silver saying to him, "Welcome to the Wild Bunch."

"Wild Bunch?" Jonah echoed, giving Greg a sideways glance.

"It's just a nickname some of the boys gave themselves after a crazy incident a few years back. I'll explain some other time."

"Yuh'd best do thet." So far as Jonah could remember, the name 'Wild Bunch' was associated with a couple of outlaw gangs in the 1890s - not exactly fitting for a group of (presumably) respectable lawmen.

Henry was leaning over to take a look inside the animal carrier. "What the heck is in here? It stinks like one of Trevor's socks."

"Don't touch it!" Greg ordered, then said loudly so all the other officers around could hear, "Everybody put on gloves before you handle anything in the area, including the vehicles, and don't your bare skin brush anything. There's a good chance that some of this stuff might have dragon sweat on it. We've already had one close call tonight, and I don't want another."

"What's going on?" Silver asked.

"We think that thing in there is the source of dragon sweat," Greg said, pointing at the carrier, "and if you're not careful, you could get a contact buzz from it."

Henry backed away from the carrier, hands held high. "If I'd known, I would've brought a hazmat suit. I don't want to end up like one of those droolers."

"If you put on some gloves, you should be fine," he replied. "Go find a tarp or something to wrap that carrier in before you put it in the SUV. I want you guys to run it over to Saint James Medical so Trece can look it over. I already called ahead."

"Ain't nothin' tuh look at. Damn thing's dead," Jonah said to Greg.

"Yeah, but we'll need concrete proof that it's the source of the drug if we want to use it as evidence." He began to walk over to the ambulance so one of the EMTs could look at his injured leg, and Jonah followed. "If we can't prove it, then all we've got is possible animal cruelty charges, and that sure as Hell won't net us the rest of Los Magos."

"Whut about them Lopez boys?" Jonah hitched a thumb at the delivery truck.

Greg stopped and muttered, "Damn, I almost forgot about 'em. Tag an officer to help you hustle them into the other SUV. And remember: No rough stuff. They've got rights."

Jonah grunted, but did as ordered. He hadn't been at this "freelance" job for a day yet, and already the rules and regulations were chafing him. But he was going to keep at it, at least until this matter with the Worms was resolved...not that he relished the notion of facing those monsters again. The first time he'd fought them roughly a hundred and thirty-five years ago had been bad enough, but now he would have to contend with both Worms and crazy drug-running Mexicans, and he didn't know which was worse.

His discomfort over the whole situation was stirring up the black ring. As Jonah waited over by the motorcycles for Greg and his fellow officers to wrap things up, the ring asked him, **[Jonah Hex of Earth is at peace?]** It had done this repeatedly ever since he'd been accidentally dosed, and each time he'd silently told it he was fine. Unfortunately, the ring knew that wasn't the case and continued to pester him. "Ah don't think Ah'm gonna be at peace fer a while yet," he finally told the ring under his breath. "Maybe thet's a good thing, 'cause if'n these Worms are as nasty as the ones Ah ran into all them years ago, bein' peaceable ain't gonna help one bit."

* * *

The sound wasn't the best, but the green-tinged image was clear enough: the younger Lopez brother handing a duffle bag to the masked Los Magos man, who opened it to briefly inspect its contents. "I gotta tell ya, Luis, it's a pretty sight," Greg said as he paused the video, then turned away from the flatscreen monitor set up in the interrogation room and looked at the brother in the flesh. "I knew it was only a matter of time before I caught you boys red-handed."

"When's my lawyer get here?" Luis Lopez said, his arms crossed over his chest as he slumped in the chair. "I know I don't have to say nothin' without him here."

"That's right, you don't." Greg pulled out the other chair and sat down across from Luis. "But that doesn't mean you can't listen to what myself and my friend have to say." He nodded towards Jonah, who stood in the corner near the door. "We know the truth about that creature in the cage, Luis. Matter of fact, it's a sure bet that we know a lot more about it than you do. But that doesn't mean you can't provide us with some valuable information, like where Los Magos found it."

"I'm not a snitch...and I _want_ my _lawyer_!"

Greg glanced at the clock on the wall. "She should be here by three. That's the drawback to bustin' folks like you in the middle of the night: you gotta rouse the court-appointed attorneys outta bed. I don't think a lawyer's gonna make a lick of dif'rence in your case, though, seein' as we've got the whole exchange on video. Most likely they'll try and convince you to plea bargain. And I _want_ you to plea bargain, Luis, 'cause I think whatever you can tell us will be more valuable than finally landing your skinny ass in jail."

Luis looked down at his handcuffed wrists laying in his lap, then replied, "I'm not saying a word until..."

Before the young man could finish his sentence, Jonah rushed across the room, put his hand around Luis's throat, and lifted him out of the chair. "Say 'lawyer' again, an' Ah'll crack yer damn skull open," he growled, pinning Luis to the wall.

"Hex, drop him!" Greg yelled.

The bounty hunter did no such thing. He was sick to death of coddling these owlhoots: they'd already spent over half an hour talking to the elder Lopez brother, only to get the same song-and-dance about lawyers, and had hoped the younger one would be more pliable. That obviously wasn't the case, so Jonah decided to fall back upon more tried-and-true methods. He continued to squeeze Luis's throat as he said to the young man, "Do yuh have any idea how dangerous thet thing yuh bought really is? All Worms do is eat an' screw an' kill, an' they ain't very particular 'bout who or whut they do it tuh, or what order." Jonah leaned in close. "Yo're damn lucky it's dead now, 'cause otherwise Ah would've locked the two of yuh in a room together just tuh see whut it could do with only stumps an' gums tuh work with."

Greg came up behind Jonah and took hold of his arm, saying, "That's enough!" He forced Jonah to let go of Luis, then said to the bounty hunter, "Outside, right now!" The two of them went into the hallway, leaving Luis to sputter and cough as he slumped in his chair again. "What the Hell were you thinkin'?" Greg snapped once the door to the interrogation room shut. "If I'd wanted to play 'good cop, crazy cop', I would've told you!"

"Ah'm sick tuh death of hearin' 'bout lawyers," Jonah said. "We need tuh get some answers out of these yahoos."

"And we will, but not by choking them to death. You can't treat criminals these days the same way you used to, Hex. When we're out bustin' heads in the field, that's one thing, but once they're in custody, you've gotta keep your hands off of 'em."

"Who in blazes decided it was better tuh coddle skunks like them? Give me five minutes alone with these two, an' Ah'll..."

"You're not gonna go anywhere near either of them," Greg said evenly. "What you _will_ do is march yourself up to my office and sit on your hands until I come fetch you. Understood?"

Jonah glared hard at Greg, then turned away with a scowl and headed for the corridor that led to the front end of the police station. **[Compassion]**, Jonah heard the black ring say.

"Great, yo're on his side, too?" he replied. "Whole damn world's gone soft."

**[Compassion!]**

"Compassion's gonna get folks killed unless we figure out where these Worms are holed up!" Jonah realized one of the officers nearby was staring at him. "Mind yer own business," he barked at the man, who quickly turned around and continued on with whatever he was doing.

Greg's office was on the second floor that ringed the main area, with a steel staircase linking the two. Jonah clomped up the stairs, not giving a damn that the noise might disturb the officers who were working hard that night to keep Warpath safe. When he got to the office, he rummaged around for a few minutes in the hope that Greg kept a bottle of something stashed on the premises, but he had no luck in finding one, so he flopped down in the leather chair behind the desk and stared up at the ceiling. "Yep, definitely not likin' this job," he said.

* * *

Hours later, Greg came up to his office to find Jonah tilted back in the desk chair, a light snore coming from beneath the hat pulled over his face. "Hey, wake up, old man," Greg said, and jostled Jonah's shoulder. The bounty hunter mumbled something, then pushed his hat back as he sat up. "At least one of us got some rest," Greg mused.

"Time is it?" Jonah asked, still half-asleep.

"Quarter 'til six." He cocked his head slightly. "You feelin' okay? You look a mite peaked again."

"Dreamin' 'bout Ears."

"Do you normally dream about body parts?"

"No, no...Ears was a person. Had big ol' jug handles." Jonah put his hands on either side of his head and pulled his ears to they stuck out. "First time Ah saw a Worm was when it bit Ears in half. Ate everything from the waist up 'cept them ears of his."

Greg got a concerned look on his face for a moment, then said, "Maybe I should just send you home. This Worm stuff is too personal for you."

"Ain't goin' home." Jonah stood up and rolled his shoulders, making his back crack. "Ah'm gonna see this thing through. Yuh want tuh revoke thet whole 'freelance' deal with me once we're done, fine, but Ah want tuh be sure these Worms are wiped out fer good this time."

"I never considered revokin' the deal, but I do think you're better out there than in here." Greg smirked. "The 'out there' part is more fun anyways. Less paperwork."

"Amen tuh thet." He rubbed hand over his face and said, "So, did them Lopez boys talk with their damn lawyer or not?"

"They did, and as I suspected, she convinced them to tell us everything they knew in exchange for some of the charges being dropped."

"Yuh mean we gotta let them go?"

"Not right away." Greg sat on the edge of the desk as he told Jonah, "They'll do a little jail time, but nowhere near as much as they would've if they hadn't cooperated. Problem is, they didn't know a whole lot. Los Magos contacted them via the Internet about distributin' dragon sweat, and they'd never met any members of the cartel until tonight. They didn't even have a way to get a hold of Los Magos: the cartel always initiated the contacts, and the brothers claim both the email and IP addresses Los Magos used were masked." He waved a hand when he saw the blank look on Jonah's face. "Never mind, it's technical junk. Rusty's workin' on their smartphones right now to see if maybe there's some trick Los Magos might've missed."

"Whut about the Worm? Do they know where it came from?"

"According to them, they didn't know the 'dragon' they were coming to pick up was real until they saw the thing in the back of the truck. It's like I was saying before about the _narcocorrido_: You hear the words, but you don't think they're being literal. Sure, we live in a world full of aliens and people that can fly, but that doesn't mean folks believe right off the bat that everything fanciful is real."

"Like thet musician fella yuh was talkin' about," Jonah said. "Speakin' of which, why cain't he tell us where Los Magos is hidin'?"

"Because the guys in Los Magos don't fully trust _him_, either. Their whole gig is based on secrecy: Always wearin' masks, never usin' their real names, this stupid business with the Internet. He's known Los Magos for about three years now, going back to when they just smuggled people across the border, so he has been to their hideout quite a few times. Trouble is, they always blindfold him on both the trip in and out, the same as they've done with the people they smuggled. They also keep him under guard while he's there, won't even let him bring his phone along. All the guy can tell me for sure is that it's in a cavern somewhere. They've got it all tricked out, but it's a cavern nonetheless."

"The dragons' lair," Jonah said under his breath. He remembered descending into the tunnel system that the Worms had dug in order to fight them on their own turf. Some of the tunnels appeared to go on for miles, and they were all infested with the murderous creatures. Once again, the prospect of repeating such acts was not appealing.

His ruminations were cut off by the ringing of Greg's cell phone. The lawman pulled it out of his pocket, looked at the screen, then tapped a few buttons. "Looks like it's time to saddle up again," he told Hex.

"Whut's goin' on?"

"Got a text from the doc," said Greg, who was already walking out of the office. "She found something of interest on your little Worm friend that she wants to show us."

* * *

The chemical smell that pervaded the morgue muted the smell of Worm, but not by much. When Doctor Trece offered them surgical masks, Jonah took one gladly. "Thanks again for coming in to do this, Doc," Greg said as he slipped his on.

"I'll just add it to the list of favors you owe me." Doctor Trece was a Latino woman in her thirties, with long black hair pinned up so as to not get in the way as she went about her work. After pulling a fresh pair of latex gloves out of a box, she approached the examination table where the Worm carcass lay on its back. "I tested the skin secretions first, and you're right: the chemical composition is nearly identical to dragon sweat. However, it's not as strong."

"You think Los Magos is...what, distilling it?" Greg asked.

"No, they're just taking it directly from the source." She carefully turned the Worm over, then indicated two small, white protrusions on its lower back. "I was finishing up my initial examination when I found this. I've snapped a few pictures for evidence already, but I didn't want to proceed further until you got here."

At first glance, Jonah thought they were small tentacles (not an unusual feature on a Worm), but as he leaned down to get a better look, he realized they were artificial. "Whut in blazes is thet?" Jonah asked the doctor.

"They're called stents," she explained. "They're used to keep passages in the body open or, in this case, to help with drainage." Trece fiddled with the end of one of them until a few drops of yellowish fluid collected on the tip of her gloved finger, which she held up as she said, "This is 100% pure dragon sweat."

"Yo're tellin' me them fellas tapped this here Worm like a keg of beer?"

"Essentially, yes."

"Christ Almighty," Greg said. "This whole thing just keeps gettin' better and better." He shook his head. "So what exactly do those stents tap into?"

"I won't know until I've done the full autopsy, but going by the position, I'd say it's the equivalent of adrenal glands for this..." The doctor turned to Hex. "What did you call it?"

"It's a Worm," he replied. "Ah've also heard 'em called Planarians afore."

"By whom? Planarians are flatworms: small invertebrates with, among other things, very rudimentary sensory organs." She laid the Worm on its back once more and gestured to its remaining eye. "Admittedly, I haven't done the full autopsy yet, but I'd say your 'Worm' has about as much relation to an actual planarian as you do to a jellyfish."

"Ah'm just tellin' yuh whut Ah was told, ma'am."

Greg waved a hand at both of them. "Never mind what they should be called. What's important is that we can prove in court this is source of the drug. 'Course, we still have to figure out where Los Magos is based out of."

"The stents might be able to narrow it down," Trece told him. "Once I remove them, I'll see what I can do about tracking them back to the manufacturer. Also, whomever did this would need to have some medical expertise. You can't just shove these in blindly and expect results."

As the others discussed possible avenues of investigation, Jonah stared down at the dead Worm, lost in thought. After a while, he asked, "Where's the other body they brought in?"

"Still bagged up." Trece motioned to a wall full of metal storage drawers at the other end of the morgue. "This seemed a higher priority, so I haven't gotten to it yet."

Without another word, Jonah began walking towards the drawers. Greg followed after him, saying, "What are you thinkin', Hex?"

"Ah'm thinkin' thet me an' the Los Magos man should have us a palaver."

"But he's _dead_, remember? You emptied out his brainpan." Then he saw Jonah pull off the glove on his left hand, exposing the ring. "It...you can do that?"

"Done it afore. Don't see why Ah cain't do it again." Jonah flexed his hand, which had finally healed up, then nodded slightly towards the doctor and said, "Get her outta here. Ah don't want an audience."

"What about the Worm? You gonna need some time alone with that, too?"

"Won't do no good. Full-blooded Worms cain't talk...an' Ah sure as Hell wouldn't want tuh revive the thing even if it could." He began to read the labels on the drawers as Greg and Trece left the room. It took a couple of tries before Jonah located the body, still partially-wrapped in the black bag the EMTs had slipped it into. The Los Magos man's mask had been removed, exposing the bloody bullethole in the man's forehead - the other officers had already run the criminal's photograph and fingerprints through the database, but it had turned up nothing. Now it was time to do a search with more unnatural methods. Standing on the corpse's left side, Jonah put his ring hand upon the unmoving chest and said, "Yuh know whut tuh do."

Nothing happened.

"Come on, dammit, just reach out an' pull on his soul, or whutever it is yuh do."

**[Love...Maggie Dupree of Earth is at peace]**, the ring said. **[Compassion...Jeb Turnbull of Earth is at peace]**.

Jonah was surprised to hear the ring speak names other than his own, then remembered that it had said Maggie and Jeb's names when he'd made the connection with each of their souls. "Whut're yuh gettin' at? It won't work unless Ah know him?"

**[Love. Compassion]**, it repeated, more insistent this time.

"Love fer Maggie, compassion fer Jeb...Ah've gotta _feel_ something. No emotion, no connection." He snorted. "Ah don't feel a damn thing towards this fella. He's a skunk who poisons folks fer a livin'. Ah ain't even sorry thet Ah killed him." A thought then occurred to Jonah, and he pressed his hand down harder upon the corpse, saying under his breath, "Yo're a no-good, lyin' bastard who's too cowardly tuh show yer face in public. Yuh sell poison tuh folks who're too weak tuh resist. Yuh would've killed me an' Saunders if'n we'd given yuh the chance. Ah _hate_ yuh."

**[Rage!]** the ring chimed in.

"Ah cain't stand fellas like yuh," Jonah continued, gritting his teeth as he pushed aside the peace in his soul in favor of darker emotions. "Ah made a career outta wipin' skunks like yerself off'n the face of the Earth, an' Ah'll be damned if'n Ah'm gonna let the fact thet yo're _dead_ stand between me an' the task at hand. Now _wake up_, yuh stupid sonovabitch! Wake up so's Ah kin beat the damn answers outta yuh!"

When the rage within him reached a boiling point, he felt the connection form between himself and the Los Magos man, with the ring acting as conduit. The lifeless body suddenly jerked beneath Jonah's hand, the bullet hole closing up and the skin turning gray as dark matter flooded into it, then the eyes flew open, revealing their now-cloudy appearance. "_Qué...qué..._" the man said, a note of confusion evident in his unearthly voice. When he looked down to see the body bag that enveloped his lower half, confusion quickly turned into panic as he let loose with a string of Spanish that Jonah just couldn't keep up with. _Ah'm too far out of practice_, Jonah thought, trying to hold the man still as he wriggled about. _Cain't even recall the last time Ah heard the language, much less spoke it._ He was about to tell the man to speak English instead when, to his surprise, the man's voice seemed to split in two, with one continuing on in Spanish while the other switched to English. The Spanish voice soon became muffled, while the English voice came through loud and clear, though the man's lip movements didn't match the latter in the least. _Are yuh doin' thet?_ Jonah silently asked the ring.

**[Hope]**.

_Muh own personal interpreter...damnation_. Presuming that it worked both ways, Jonah put aside his wonder about this new development and said to the man, "Best calm down, boy, or else Ah'm gonna put yuh right back where Ah fetched yuh from."

"_But what's going on? Why does everything look so strange?" _He twisted his head, trying to see what lay around him. "_What is this place?"_

"The morgue. Yo're dead." Jonah held up his ring hand, saying, "An' this is the only thing keepin' yuh in this world. Ah brought yuh back so's Ah could ask yuh a few questions. If'n yuh cooperate, Ah'll help yuh rest in peace. If'n yuh don't...well, Ah reckon it's up tuh the Lord where yuh end up."

The Los Magos man's eyes narrowed. "_That is the biggest load of..._"

Before he could finish the sentence, Jonah slapped his palm against the man's chest, withdrawing the connection, and the Los Magos man turned back into an unmoving corpse. Jonah counted to ten under his breath, then put his hand on the man's chest again to reestablish the connection. "Ah don't know where yo're goin," Jonah said once the man was revived, "but Ah ain't got no problem with leavin' yuh there."

"_It's a trick! A goddamned..._"

Another slap, and the corpse went down. This time, Jonah counted to thirty before bringing him back. As soon as the man stopped screaming, Jonah told him, "Ah kin do this all day, an' Ah will unless yuh answer muh questions. Yuh savvy?"

"_Yes, yes! Anything you want! Just don't send me back again!_"

"Smart man." Jonah backed up a little to let the man sit up. "Firstly, tell me where yuh found them 'dragons' y'all pump the drugs out of."

The man gasped for air, more out of shock and fear than any actual need to breathe. "_Lower chambers...we'd seen evidence of them for a while, but they hid..._"

"Lower chamber of whut? Yuh talkin' 'bout the cavern y'all hole up in?"

He nodded. "_It's a cave system. We found it years ago...runs for miles."_

"Let me guess: this goes _under_ the border 'tween Mexico an' the States," Jonah said, to which the man vigorously nodded. "Certainly explains how yuh earned yer reputation as 'magicians', 'specially since yuh've never let anyone see how yuh do the trick." Jonah leaned closer. "Now...where's the exit fer the caves on this side of the border?"

The man hesitated before saying, "_Closest one is on the outer edge of the reservation._"

"Is the trail marked?" When he didn't answer, Jonah told him, "Ah kin understand thet yuh don't want tuh betray 'em, but let me remind yuh thet whutever life yuh had is _over_ now. All's yuh got left is whut's waitin' fer yuh on the other side, an' Ah kin make sure thet's a touch more pleasant if'n yuh don't jerk me around."

The Los Magos man turned his head away for a moment, as if contemplating the possibilities. When he turned back again, there was a look of defeat upon his face. "_We mark the entrances with GPS beacons. There's an app on my phone that's already tuned to that one."_

Jonah didn't fully understand, but figured Greg could puzzle it out. "How many are down there? An' Ah don't just mean yer cohorts, Ah'm talkin' 'bout the 'dragons' too."

"_I don't know_," he started to say, then shouted when he saw Jonah bring his hand up, "_I don't about the dragons! Last time I checked, there was around fifty, but that was a couple of weeks ago. The big one might've popped out a few more since then._"

Jonah repressed a shudder. Bad enough to be tussling against regular-sized Worms, but "the big one" could only be referring to a Mother Worm, and the only example he'd ever seen was a good thirty feet high. "An' how many skunks like yerself?"

"_Eight. We've lost a few to the dragons over the years_."

"Ah'll bet yuh have."

After a moment or two of silence, the man focused his milky-white eyes on Jonah and asked, "_What are going to do with me? You said that I'm dead, but..._"

"Ah cain't bring yuh all the way back, if'n thet's whut yo're thinkin'. Ah kin only move yer soul along...an' Ah reckon it's time tuh be doin' thet." Jonah didn't think it was entirely proper to grant peace to someone who profited from harming others, but he'd promised to do so in exchange for the man's cooperation, and Jonah Hex always kept his word. He made the Los Magos man lay down again, then placed his ring hand on the man's chest and let the rage he'd built up inside himself fade so the peace within his own soul could guide the way. "Don't fight the urge when it comes," Jonah said, "just follow it."

"_Fight what? Nothing's happening._"

Jonah frowned. "Yuh don't feel nothin'? Don't hear nobody callin' yuh?"

"_No, I'm just...cold. That's it_."

This didn't make sense to Jonah: he could sense that the path was wide open, to the point where his head was swimming a bit from the waves of serenity pouring into him. With Maggie and Jeb, the effect had been almost immediate, so why wasn't the same thing happening with this man? Then Jonah recalled a phrase he'd read in the Bible long ago, during one of his rare periods when he attempted to be a touch more pious: _There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked._ "Ah'm sorry, but it looks like Ah kin only get yuh so far," he told the man. "This method ain't as cut an' dry as Ah'd been led tuh believe. Reckon yuh've got some hard work ahead of yuh if'n yuh want tuh get any further."

"_What're you...no! Don't..._" But Jonah was already in the midst of severing the connection, and the corpse became still and silent once more. "Good luck, son," Jonah said, zipping the bag shut. "Ah'll make sure yuh get a proper burial."

* * *

The reservation in question belonged to the Tohono O'odham tribe, and straddled the U.S. and Mexico. Thanks to its sovereign-nation status and small police force, it had been the favored stomping ground of smugglers for years, and as Greg and the others saw once they pulled up the phone's GPS map, the entrance to the cave lay just within a mile of the O'odham border. Needless to say, this was a little outside of their jurisdiction, so Greg had to call in a few favors. By the time the clock crept towards 10 A.M., he'd assembled a team of a dozen officers (counting himself and Jonah) to make a raid on the Los Magos hideout. The smuggler's truck had been pressed back into service to lead the caravan out there, with an officer behind the wheel wearing a devil mask and clothes similar to the Los Magos man's - should there be a lookout, it was hoped they would spot this truck first before the other vehicles trailing a half-mile behind.

Jonah rode in the back of one of the SUVs, with Greg up front in the passenger seat and a federal marshal named Smythe driving. The marshal had worked with the Warpath P.D. before on a case, so Greg had asked for him specifically to act as liaison for both the O'odham tribal police and (since this involved illegal border crossings) U.S. Homeland Security. As they drove down a rutted back road, Smythe asked, "So, you any relation to that other Jonah Hex? The bounty hunter? I'd read somewhere that he had kids that became lawmen..."

"He's a distant relation," Greg answered for him, to Jonah's relief. He hadn't given much thought yet as to what to do if somebody made the connection between his past life and his current one.

"Well, one thing's for sure," Smythe said as he looked at Jonah in the rearview mirror, "there certainly isn't a family resemblance." The marshal chuckled, as did Greg, while Jonah just stared out the window at the mesquite growing alongside the road.

As they reached the area where the cave was located, Greg signaled down the line for the caravan to stop, and let the decoy truck go on ahead alone. The plan was for the driver - along with the officer hiding in the back of the truck - to find the cave entrance using the GPS coordinates they'd found, then report back to Greg if the way was clear. As they waited, Greg called the station to see if Rusty had made any progress in cracking the memory on the Los Magos man's phone. There was only one entrance marker loaded into the map, and they were under the impression that there were multiple entrances on the U.S. side at least. Unfortunately, they couldn't wait around in the hope that they'd find and block off every possible escape route: it had been over ten hours since Greg and Jonah had nixed the exchange, and the remaining members of the cartel were sure to be on high alert since their man never returned. If they delayed the operation any longer, there was a good chance Los Magos would be long gone before they even got there.

Nearly twenty minutes passed between the truck dropping out of sight and the call coming in over the walkie-talkie. Not wanting to waste another second, Greg gave the "forward" signal as soon as the officer told him there was no one in sight. The caravan proceeded through the foothills until they saw the truck parked beside a rocky slope, with their disguised officer standing nearby and waving the devil mask like a flag. "Where's Davis?" Greg asked as he climbed out of the SUV.

"Down there," the officer said, his English accent contrasting against Greg's drawl. "It's just a hole in between some rocks. We had to roll a few aside to even get into it."

Jonah peered down the slope at the collection of boulders indicated. "Ah was expectin' something big enough tuh drive thet truck through."

"Probably had one of his buddies help him haul the Worm through the caves, with the truck already parked on this side," Greg replied. "The check we ran on the plates said it was stolen two days ago." He turned to the officer, who was lighting up a smoke. "Trevor, pick out a couple of guys to stand guard with you topside. We don't know if anyone from Los Magos has gone out searchin' for their comrade, and I don't want them sneakin' up on us."

Trevor sketched off a salute. "You got it, mate."

"Everybody else, gets your butts down the slope. And make sure you've all got on protective gear...that means bulletproof vests _and_ gloves of some kind. You've all been briefed on these creatures, and I don't want anybody going goofy on me because they stuck their hand in some slime." Greg began to head down the slope, favoring his wounded leg as best he could - a sensible man would've stayed topside, but he'd suffered worse injuries as the Vigilante, and wasn't going to let a little thing like a stab wound hinder him. When they got to the hole, Greg looked at Jonah and said, "You've got the experience...wanna take the lead?"

"Yo're all heart." Jonah slipped feet-first into the hole. The cave beyond was only about four feet in height, so Jonah had to crouch as he moved away from the entrance. The floor sloped sharply downward, and he soon found that he could stand upright, though the passage remained narrow - ridges had been carved into the floor to help with footing. The others soon filed in, each of them producing a flashlight as they advanced into the darkness. "Where's thet Davis fella?" Jonah said as they moved further down into the cave.

"Over here." A light bobbed into view before them, illuminating a bend in the path. As the group reached it, they saw it opened onto a new chamber, this one about ten feet across and at least as tall. A path had been worn into the cave floor, leading off to parts unknown. "Lots of footprints down here," Davis told them, "but no other signs of life."

Greg said to Jonah, "What about you? See anything out of the ordinary?"

Jonah searched the walls. The black ring granted him perfect night vision, but it couldn't show him something that just plain wasn't there. "Nothin'. Place is a damn tomb."

"There's a lovely thought," Silver muttered nearby.

"Okay, we proceed as planned. I want weapons drawn, but nobody fires without my orders. We don't need to be shootin' at shadows." Greg pulled his own Peacemaker and began to follow the path, saying to Jonah under his breath, "It's open season for ring-slingin', though. Just keep it non-lethal."

"Gotcha," Jonah replied, silently adding, _But if'n Ah see a Worm, Ah'm goin' full-bore._

* * *

"I'm not so sure about what Sheriff Saunders told us," one of the officers was saying to Trevor. The three men were leaning against one of the SUVs, their backs to the rocky slope - standing guard over a hole in the middle of nowhere wasn't the most exciting duty. "Do you really think these Mexicans are making drugs from a bunch of prehistoric lizard-men?"

"If that's what he says, then it's the truth." Trevor took a drag on his cigarette. "Besides, Henry and Silver saw the thing, so I know the lizard-man part is real, at least."

"You Wild Bunch boys always stick together, don't you?" the other officer said with just a hint of sarcasm. "Like your own little club."

"Maybe if you'd talk a little nicer, sunshine, we'd let you in." He took another drag, then blew a perfect smoke ring. "Still and all, I'll bring you up at the next meeting. We could use a mascot." After Trevor finished his cigarette, he stubbed it out, then went to shake out a fresh one from the pack. "Blimey, I'm out. Can you spare a ciggie, Blake?"

"Left mine in the car. I'm trying to quit." The officer walked around the SUV, towards the vehicle he'd arrived in, and fetched the pack. As Blake returned to the group, a bullet came flying at him from the direction of the slope and slammed into his skull, killing him instantly. The other two men immediately dropped to the ground, each of them taking shelter behind one of the SUV's tires. Trevor cursed as he yanked the walkie-talkie off of his belt. "Sheriff, this is Trevor. Someone shot at us. Blake's down." There was a crackle over the line that sounded like someone talking, but nothing could be made out. "Do you hear me? Bloody Hell!" He tossed the walkie-talkie down, then looked over at the other officer, who was peering carefully around the SUV. "Can you see anything?"

Another shot rang out and passed dangerously close to the other officer's head, but it missed. "Saw a muzzle flash from under the rocks...ten yards from the cave. Bastard must've been hiding there all this time."

Trevor wiped sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve as he tried to think of a plan. The one that came to him wasn't the best, but it might work. "Take off your hat," he told the other officer, "and hold it out like you're leaning over to take another peek."

"Like they do in the movies? Are you kidding?"

"Not a bit. Just humor me and give it a go." The other officer did what he asked, and when the shooting started up again, Trevor slid under the SUV and took aim at the sniper, who was barely visible beneath the rocks he'd piled around himself. Trevor fired off shots from his handgun until he saw the sniper's rifle barrel droop, then he yelled, "Come on out of that spider-hole with your hands up!" There was no movement at first, then some of the rocks rolled away, revealing a man with a few splashes of blood on his shirt and wearing a wolf's-head mask. He'd dropped the rifle, but one of his hands was behind his back. "Both hands, mate, or else I'll drop you!" Trevor said as he climbed out from under the SUV.

The other officer came up next to Trevor, his own handgun trained on the sniper as well, but the man didn't seem intimidated by this show of force in the least. Then the man began to run across the slope, heading for the cave entrance. It was only then that he raised his other hand, revealing a makeshift bandolier strung with a half-dozen grenades. Both officers fired as one, hoping to stop him before he could reach the cave, but as the man's pace began to falter, he pulled the wire attached to the grenade pins, then threw the bandolier into the cave.

Trevor dove for his walkie-talkie, which was still on ground. "Fire in the hole!" he screamed over the line in the vain hope that it would get through. "Repeat: Fire in the hole!"

* * *

The group was roughly a quarter-mile from the cave entrance and still moving downward when Trevor first tried to contact them. Greg called for a halt as he tried to make out the words, but the thick stone walls were blocking most of the signal. "Say again, Trevor," he sent back, and received nothing but silence.

Smythe said to him, "Maybe we should try cells instead."

"You really think we're going to get any bars in a cave?"

The exchange was nonsense to Jonah, so he ignored it in favor of a vague sound echoing down the passageway. "Gunshots," he finally determined.

"You sure?" Greg asked, then decided that he'd rather check and be wrong than ignore it and have three dead officers. "Henry, Alvarez, and Hex, we're goin' back up. Everybody else, just stay put." Greg and the others were already running back the way they'd come when the walkie-talkie crackled to life again, spitting out only one clear word: "_Fire...!_"

There was barely any time for the warning to be comprehended before the explosion ripped through the cave.

**_TO BE CONTINUED!_**


End file.
